Hi all
Well I have my own article on where the heck is global warming? We are asking that here in
Boulder where we have broken records the past two days for the coldest days on record. We
had 4 inches of snow. The high the last 2 days was below 30F and the normal is 69F, and it
smashed the previous records for these days by 10F. The low was about 18F and also a
record low, well below the previous record low. This is January weather (see the Rockies
baseball playoff game was canceled on saturday and then played last night in below freezing
weather).
Trenberth, K. E., 2009: An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s global
energy. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 1, 19-27,
doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2009.06.001. [1][PDF] (A PDF of the published version can be obtained
from the author.)
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a
travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008
shows there should be even

h/t to Steve Goddard

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Bunk. If you look at the top chart, it seems to have 1998 as the highest temperature. So you arbitrarily take that as the starting point, and basically make a trend line on 10 data points? Not to mention the fact that the mean in the second graph of course is quite a bit higher than in the overall graph. As such, using the same black bar for this, and not putting the second graph into context of the first one is extremely misleading. A “trick”, if you will.

in holland 2009 must have been also a cooler year , although statistics may tell a different story and therefor should be considered questionable , januari and december 2009 were both months with substantial lower temperatures than usual whilst the summer was a very cool one , with in the centre of holland only one day with temperatures above 30 degrees celsius , which became a very regular phenomenon in the last decade of the nineties ,counting 5 to 15 days each summer with temperatures over 30 degrees celsius . Is not the IPCC not warning for more extremes , whilst exactly the opposite is happening ?
Okay there may be excuse in this case , the mountains disappeared from Holland , so this must have been created by the missing fohn-winds and is it therefor not unrealistic to reduce the canadian northern territory stations to one point of measure famous for its fohn-winds ?
Nowadays the best example of the strong believers here is demonstrated by the lack of temperature-registrations for the United States on television here in Holland once the temperature is falling below . Then the temperature is reading 0. Why tell the truth , which in this case is so easy , when you are able to fool the public , showing the lack of respect and the dogmatic fanatism .

Since real climate is a function of things like altitude, latitude, and distance from the ocean (yes, check the definitions of things like ‘desert climate’ and ‘mediterranean climate’ and ‘temperate zone climate’…) that means that the “30 year average of weather” used by the AGW guys is no more climate than a “10 year average of weather”.

So I’m quite happy to say that there is a definite strong cooling trend underway. Heck, if they can ignore 60 year cycles like the PDO and 80 year and even 176 year cycles of solar output, and, for that matter, the 1500 year Bond Event Cycles, then so can I.

Filter with 30 years, you can not see a cycle longer than that. (Heck, even a 20 year cycle can look a lot like noise or a mistaken trend). So once you’ve decided to blow off all the really interesting long cycles of weather, what’s one more? In fact, the faster response is more useful for things like crop planning and ski trips…

So we’re headed down, and harder than we had been headed up. Give it another 20 years and this cooling 1/2 cycle ought to be taking a break (if it is PDO related… I don’t want to think about a Maunder event… and a Bond Event, well, we ARE just about due for one, but we don’t want to go there… that cycle leads to WW III from starvation… The last one was The Dark Ages and started about 530 – 540 AD. Add the nominal 1470 years of a Bond event and you get 2000 – 2010 AD. Gee, just about the time temperatures started falling… and the Sun went very very quiet… but the error band on that 1470 can add a decade or three… )

has a couple of my comments but mostly just collected together some details from Wiki as the Wiki Langoliers started to erase the MWP, LIA, and everything else interesting… so I grabbed what I could still find and stuck it there. Needs cleanup, but does give you an idea about things like “The Iron Age Cold Period” and other “pessimums”…

I’m still holding out hope that all that ocean heat (currently driving our global Lava Lamp at extreme speeds moving all that ocean heat to the poles to dump at high rates) will keep the place warm for the rest of my lifetime. Toss in a short solar cycle recovery and we might just have a “normal” if cold winter for a decade or three.

Well, I can always hope…

FWIW, I think you can use a “loopy jet stream” vs a flat one as an indicator of how much heat differential there is between the tropical oceans and the cold poles. So we’re getting darned cold poles, and heat is being dumped big time, now you have a larger thermal gradient between equator and poles to drive interesting air flows for a while. Thus the frozen Canadian Express and Siberian Express dumping cold all over, yet more warmth running up the oceans to the poles to get frozen and return.

I’d give it a decade of that before we cool the oceans enough to start getting Real Cold… So just hope the last sunspots are a sign of things to come…

(And yes, I think the sun is the driver of our climate on a long term macro scale, with short term waffles caused by ‘ringing’ of misc fluid systems…)

Oh, and take a nice look at that chart. Notice that the GIStemp baseline is set at the bottom of that blue dip… 1950-1980

Paid weather commentators in New Zealand are dismayed that the summer there seems to have gone, when late Jan and most of Feb are usually the best months to enjoy outdoor stuff. Latest survey in NZ’s Herald newspaper says only 25% of respondents to the simple yes/no survey believe that the planet is warming.

There is a reason why NASA GISS choose “hottest decade ever”, even though the previous link already shows they purposefully adjusted temperatures up meaning the hottest ever is likely a purposeful lie. With all the press about being too cold, this was to distract people and try to keep the agenda focused on cash cow that is global warming. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

To Wouter: There is a reason why we like to start with 1998. It is the same tactic the AGW crowd uses of taking a very low temperature as a starting point and saying “see it is getting warmer!” So two can play that game. “See it is getting cooler!” If you condemn this, you must also condemn when the AGW crowd does it as well.

**************
E.M.Smith (04:13:07) :
Since real climate is a function of things like altitude, latitude, and distance from the ocean (yes, check the definitions of things like ‘desert climate’ and ‘mediterranean climate’ and ‘temperate zone climate’…) that means that the “30 year average of weather” used by the AGW guys is no more climate than a “10 year average of weather”.
***************
And that’s exactly why I’ve been wondering lately why the focus on temperature? The heat capacity of air changes with humidity and the amount of heat (internal energy) in a unit volume of air varies with altitude. It is like a case of comparing an almost infinite variety of fruits with one another. The focus should be on the total energy and energy balance of the Earth system defined in some appropriate manner. The rest would take care of itself.

Well, well, well. New study about the reliability of surface temperature trends over the conterminous U.S. (CONUS) in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds that ““the bias is counterintuitive to photographic documentation of poor exposure because associated instrument changes have led to an artificial negative (“cool”) bias in maximum temperatures and only a slight positive (“warm”) bias in minimum temperatures.”

Oh the expression climate change. Will the Sahara become a high altitude forrest? Or will it not change?
Global warming as a phrase didn’t work out. Climate change is not working. I notice a few alarmists are now hammering on pollution more aggressively. None have done anything about the 75% of the people in India and China that cook and heat on wood and coal. …or other trash and waste.

Or, let’s look at only December temperatures – going all the way back to 1928: click. Where’s that runaway global warming? It’s a travesty that we can’t find it.

I could provide twenty similar charts, but some folks have too much invested in their belief that CO2 will cause climate catastrophe to accept the fact that the planet is going through one of its normal, natural cycles – and neither CO2 nor human activity have much to do with it.

Here’s the hero of the alarmist contingent, making one of his hilarious predictions: click

The claim that CO2 will cause catastrophic AGW is being debunked by planet Earth. Who are you to say Gaia is wrong?

Well, the last two days it has been warm in Sydney, inner west. Yesterday (Friday) was fairly normal for summer, 36c, but reported as a “scorcher”. Today (Saturday) it was 43c where I am, it was hot OK, but dry with it, ~20% humidity. Now it is down to less than ~24c, but humidity at ~75%, sticky. It”ll be like this for a week. No fires of any significance.

Past midsummer now here in Australia and a cool one too, again, like last year.

Mind you, I still find it remarkable that some people accept that one thermometer, near an airfield, is OK to determine average tempeartre for the entire continent of Antarctica.

Speaking of appropriate (or inappropriate) terminology, e.g., global warming, etc., is it not time to consider re-labelling the so-called “instrumental” record? Factors like the extraordinary reductions in numbers of measuring stations (both domestic and global), retrospective changes in the historic record, bizarre location and instrument condition problems all tend to suggest that we are not actually working with the “instrumental” record anymore.

What we are being presented with each month by NCDC/NASA/GISS/HADCRUT has been so massaged, modified, fudged, factored, tweaked and transmogrified as to no longer represent anything which might be logically referred to as the “instrumental” record.

I think it would represent, and portray, a far more accurate picture if we all began to refer to it as the “computational” record, vs., e.g., the satelite record. In this bizarre battleground of science vs. ideology, which words we use mean a lot.

It is a hoot that two enities can the same data and make it look extremely differnt. The alarmists have been masters at twisting the data and making charts to make it seem we are racing toward oblivion with GW. Sad how many fall for their hyperbole dung………the little bit of warming we have seen in 150 years falls easily into the natural swings…..Sincerely, John….

It doesn’t matter what is really happening, NASA/NOAA/GISS/EAU/CRU et al simply “adjust” the data to have happen what they want to happen.

Then the refuse to tell us how they “adjusted” the data, because they have PhD’s in “Trust Me” science.

Then they tell us there is a Climate Crisis, we are going to die, the End is Nigh, Repent you Carbon Sinners. They actually have sandwich boards made now so they can parade around on Sundays at public gatherings and save their voices.

Then they demand $trillions of taxpayer’s dollars to solve the faux crisis they created.

“Climate Science” is an oxymoron. What is the population of AGW’s “Climate Science”?
CS is well-populated; thus, it’s a science, no?
…-

“The Experimental Method and the Rise of Modern Science”

“The word “scientist” was not seriously used much before 1840, and not widely used until the twentieth century. “Man of science,” “thinker” or “scholar” should be considered preferred labels for those who worked with natural philosophy and what we call science prior to this. By the mid-eighteenth century, probably no more than 300 people in the world could be classified as scientists. By the year 1800 there were perhaps a thousand, by the mid-nineteenth century 10,000 and by 1900 maybe 100,000. The overwhelming majority of these were still Europeans or people of European origins. The European population itself grew rapidly at the same time, but the percentage of scientists grew even faster. Science during this period finally made the transition from being a gentleman’s hobby to being a well-populated profession.”

Hmm, after a string of very hot US years, the temperature dropped in 2008 and early 2009 when La Nina effects kicked in. Not too surprising.

The unusual cold and the strong Arctic Oscillation in late 2009 is interesting; it would be informative if we could understood what caused such an extreme AO (the strongest since the 70s), but we really don’t know. It is always fun to speculate on short term regional trends in temperature.

But the big picture is being addressed over at Bob Tisdale’s post. Global temperatures, when adjusted for ENSO, volcanoes, and solar cycle, are trending up substantially. Bob has a model that shows step increases, and attempts to rule out a more regular rise, but others have found a regular increase in temperatures, after adjusting for known impacts.

The GISS data, adjusted for these effects, show 2009 global temperatures close to exceeding the 2005 record high global temperature.

And the UAH record is headed for what appears to be the highest January anomaly in the database, joining the November record high temperature, and the 2nd highest UAH global anomalies for September and July. Almost all the highest UAH monthly anomalies in the database are from the El Nino years of 1998 and 2005, so if the recent El Nino affects 2010 as expected, the UAH monthly anomalies should approach or break the record highs in the next nine months.

Someone asked why choose 1998 as the start point of the second graph? Because there was a big step upwards in in 1998, which has now been completely erased. Temperatures in the US and Alaska are back to where there have been most of the time since the 1920s.

Also read the sciencedaily article, linked above – gives some interesting pointers as to why the globe has not warmed as expected – something which is fairly widely accepted by all sides of the debate – some call it ‘cooling’ others call it ‘not as warm as predicted’.

The first para…

“According to current best estimates of climate sensitivity, the amount of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases added to Earth’s atmosphere since humanity began burning fossil fuels on a significant scale during the industrial period would be expected to result in a mean global temperature rise of 3.8°F — well more than the 1.4°F increase that has been observed for this time span.”

michael e. forster who wrote: “Factors like the extraordinary reductions in numbers of measuring stations (both domestic and global), retrospective changes in the historic record, bizarre location and instrument condition problems all tend to suggest that we are not actually working with the “instrumental” record anymore.”

Perhaps you show read this recent paper currently in press for the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, published by the American Geophysical Union.

The paper by Matthew J. Menne, Claude N. Williams, Jr., and Michael A. Palecki of the NOAA/National Climatic Data Center addresses the claims in the Watts 2009 paper published by the Heartland Institute.

Not counting the “record” catagories (which obviously are their own things), there are five catagories. If evenly distributed that means over a 115 year record you’d expect each to contain 23 years. So 19, 21, and 22 (Arkansas) should be “much below”, 39 “below” and 99 and 97 should be “much above”, right?

And *how in the world* is Arkansas a 22 and next door Texas is a 79? I mean, really? Are all the thermometers in Texas at Galveston or something? Actually, given what I’ve read about Cali thermometer sitings, I’m wondering about it too, given its length from north to south.

You are so right! ANYONE who has studied Climate Science will know that a two year record over a tiny fraction of the Earth’s surface (parts of the USA) means that the global trend is now set for cooling. All that nonsense we studied and learned about through published research is totally bogus and we should listen to what blogs say instead. It wasn’t unusually warm in parts of Alaska this winter! Lies! We all know peer reviewed research is unbelievable, and that all these thousands of scientists with IQs over 140 are biased and lying just to get to our money. We should all listen to the reassuring voices at FOX news because we know that is the true source of unbiased news and comment. We should all just live our lives, not ask questions, believe what the cooperation tells us, be thankful for how God has anointed us and live in the security that they know what is best for us all…. now I will just go and light up a smoke, ’cause all that stuff about cancer y”all told us about for year is bogus too… heck the companies had it right all along :-) Sweet dreams America……

All I can say is THANK GOD for Europe (my home) because you guys are losing your way and I guess we will eventually have to show you the way back.

Wouter – don’t you get it. 1998 is now12 years ago and temperatures have been drooping since then.

1998 looks to most fair minded people as the peak of a temperature cycle (let’s face it there are very few factors in nature which act in a linear fashion) and it is in the nature of all cycles for there to be a decline after a peak.

Don’t worry, though, there will be a cyclic upswing again some time in the future, which sadly for runaway temperature theorists, will result in a further downswing sometime later.

And I’m prepared to concede that there will be a slight upward trend when viewed over centuries, but what there is no evidence of is uncontrolled thermal runaway except within the simplistic, and possibly rigged, climate models.

Richard Garnache (06:53:47) : Wouter;
A point well taken but, Moving the line down doesn’t change the slope of the data or the conclusion that the earth has been cooling.

My question: How do you get the conclusion that the earth has been cooling by looking at the US temperature record since the big El Nino in 1998? I hope you realize that this post is only about US temperatures? Furthermore, there weren’t any statistical tests of this temperature trend in the post?

How do you know what is statistically meaningful versus random variation?

The interesting thing is that the charts are showing the U.S. is cooling but they have temperatures that show the overall globe still warming.

The US has the bulk of the recording stations and shows cooling. The rest of the World has much fewer recording stations and a lot of the temperature data is not from direct measurement of the air but artful guesses of what a grid temp is based upon the closet actual measurement. The grids are fairly large and the distance between a known temp and an unmeasured grid is considerable.

The AGW crowd tells me the US only makes up 2% of the Global Surface, but the US does not exist in a vacuum. The masses of air that move over the US come from somewhere. I just find it odd that the actual meaured temperature is cooling (US) but the Global temps show increase and most the grids are not based on actual temperature readings but mathematical guesses of what the “real” temperature would be if you took a reading.

The 20th Century saw the most active sun in over 500 years, two warm phases of the PDO with only one cool phase and an increase in atmospheric CO2. While the CO2 ‘influence’ was at its greatest (mid-20th Century), the PDO was in its negative phase and the global temperature cooled, indicating that the ocean cycle has a much larger impact on global temperatures than increasing CO2.

(Please don’t wave the sulfate magic wand at this. Temperatures cooled in the Southern Hemisphere, where there were no sulfates, in lock step with the Northern Hemisphere. Claiming pixies caused the cooling is just as evidence based as claiming sulfates were responsible.)

So add it up. Nearly every thing that we think may have a significant influence on global temperature was in full positive mode during the 20th Century: the sun, ocean cycles and greenhouse gases.

So what lies ahead for the 21st Century? We will have 2 cool phases of the PDO and only one warm one. The sun, apparently, is settling down and may be headed to a minimum. CO2 will continue to increase, but due to its logarithmic influence on climate, the increase will have less and less impact. The net result will be global cooling. Any other conclusion simply ignores the facts!

So why choose 1998 as the starting point? Because that is likely when all the warming influences in the 20th Century peaked. We choose 1998 because a prediction was made that temperatures would begin to cool in the early 21st century and the data is supporting that theory of climate change. It supports the theory of stronger natural variability and a weaker human influence. the data does not support the opposite. We choose 1998 because it is scientifically important in recognizing the natural cycles.

We lingered near the top of the curve for several years and are now going down. In the past, El Ninos where step jumps in a gradually increasing slope of global temperatures. The current El Nino is manifesting as a temporary slowing of the cooling trend. Big difference.

There is no question that the US has been cooling since 1998. It has cooled dramatically, as seen in the NCDC data. Not to mention record snows the last few winters, the second coldest NFL game in history, and the first Major League playoff game to get snowed out.

Well, if indeed the temperature across the United States is cooling a little, it may in part be due to a cooling bias found in an analysis of the USHCN stations. The authors of the study “On the reliability of the U.S. Surface Temperature Record” conclude “a small overall residual negative (‘cool’) bias appears to remain in the adjusted maximum temperature series” and “we find no evidence that the CONUS temperature trends are inflated due to poor station siting.”

Meanwhile, if you look beyond the 2% of the Earth that is your own backyard, you find: 2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows.
(Source: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/)

Given the recent revelations regarding our temp “washers” and “adjusters”, coupled with the work done at this sight regarding the quality of the surface stations, I don’t believe anyone can say with any certainty anything about whether the earth is getting cooler or warmer. The veracity of the reported temperatures are very much in question(worldwide). The proxies used for temperatures are absurd. Therefore, any discussion regarding the earth’s temperature is purely academic and not pertinent to reality . IMHO

If this cooling does not stop soon, there will be an ice age in Eureka, California (small town on the coast in the far north of the state). Temperatures have been dropping steadily since 1992 at the rate of 15 degrees C per century.

The US hasn’t cooled a “little” since 1998, rather it has cooled a lot. Alaska has cooled more than 2.5C. The cooling is not due to one of the many nonsensical USHCN manipulations, but rather due to colder weather. Hope this helps.

dekitchen: interesting points. Still, how do climate scientists explain that parts of the earth are cooling, while CO2 continues to increase? Physics is impartial, and does not allow CO2 to work its warming in some areas but not in others. If CO2 causes warming, then that warming will be observed in all locations.

The fact that the U.S. is cooling, and has done so for more than a decade, indicates that something other than CO2 is responsible for temperature increases AND decreases.

You know what? I’ve been paying close attention to this subject for years now, and after the Climategate emails etc were released, I don’t believe a word any of them are saying any more (the warmers, that is).

“The National Weather Service says 2009 has seen the coldest July since the official recording station was moved away from the lakefront in 1942. The average temperature this month in Chicago has been a mere 68.9 degrees.

Even in the years before 1942, when the National Weather Service recorded temperatures at the cooler lakefront, there are only three years that had colder Julys through the 26th.”

?? Is the last decade really the warmest for the century? According to my calibrated eyes, the decade 1929-1939 is not much, if any, cooler than 2000-2009. If the last decade is warmer, is it significantly warmer at the 95% level???

There are some scientists that I can believe in, such as Lindzen, Spencer, Michaels, Soon and a good number of others. They might be right. They might be wrong. But I still believe that they are honest and doing their best to further scientific research.

There are other “scientists”, Hansen, Jones, Mann, Watson, Houghton, Stieg (and dozens more) who have forfeited the right to expect to be taken seriously in any other capacity than as barefaced con men. And often as incompetent con men at that. I wouldn’t give Hansen any more credit than a buffoon like Monbiot.

But I wouldn’t expect even Lindzen to forecast with confidence what the climate / weather will be like even in three years time, never mind 90 years. And he would lose credibility in my eyes if he did.

Sure, we know a hell of a lot more about how the climate works than we did a decade ago. But there are still huge uncertainties. In fact the only thing it is pretty clear is that the theory that climate is driven more than fractionally by human CO2 emissions is an absolutely busted flush.

Clearly, by 2010, we can be confident that it will either be cooler, about the same or warmer. My hunch (and I don’t think anyone can have much more than a hunch) is that it is more likely to be cooler than warmer.

I just hope that it won’t be much cooler, as other comments have noted.

But the real “travesty” isn’t (as Trenberth suggests) “that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment”.

The REAL travesty is that we haven’t really got a very clear idea what the climate has actually been doing for the last thirty years! Because, irrespective of how many billions of tax payers dollars have been poured into this AGW scam, we can clearly see that the surface stations results are almost completely without merit and that GISS, UEA, the Hadley Centre have all been carrying out fraudulent “adjustments” to further their political and rent seeking agendas.

The satellite data appears to be more reliable but I certainly wouldn’t say I was confident it is robust.

But there again, what on earth does some annual (or monthly, or decadal) average temperature really mean? Is there some figure which is “correct”?

The title of this post is wrong. It should read “2008 and 2009 were the coolest years since 1997 in the USA”. 1998 obviously was a very hot year, talking about “coolest year since” thus doesn’t make any sense. But 1997 indeed was slightly cooler than 2008 and 2009.

Interesting how alarmists love to talk about the warm decade since 1998, but are completely disinterested in the actual trends during that decade. There was a step function upwards in 1998, and a strong slope downwards since. This is very significant.

michael e. forster who wrote: “Factors like the extraordinary reductions in numbers of measuring stations (both domestic and global), retrospective changes in the historic record, bizarre location and instrument condition problems all tend to suggest that we are not actually working with the “instrumental” record anymore.”

Perhaps you show read this recent paper currently in press for the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, published by the American Geophysical Union.

The paper by Matthew J. Menne, Claude N. Williams, Jr., and Michael A. Palecki of the NOAA/National Climatic Data Center addresses the claims in the Watts 2009 paper published by the Heartland Institute.

Thanks for the invitation, it was fun. However, this study points backward to further studies, and so on, so that a full understanding of what has happened here will take time to read the supporting work. I do note that the authors conclude the following.

The reason why station exposure does not play an obvious role in temperature trends
probably warrants further investigation. It is possible that, in general, once a changeover to bad
exposure has occurred, the magnitude of background trend parallels that at well exposed sites
albeit with an offset. Such a phenomenon has been observed at urban stations whereby once a
site has become fully urbanized, its trend is similar to those at surrounding rural sites [e.g.,
Boehm, 1998; Easterling et al. 2005]. This is not to say that exposure is irrelevant in all contexts
or that adherence to siting standards is unimportant.

Indeed it does warrant further investigation. In fact, it is so interesting a topic that I cannot understand why, when the change in instrumentation and/or siting was made, the new and old stations were not run simultaneously for a time to actually quantify the effect. I worked for a Federal science program in the 1970s (Interior Department) and we often ended up computing things that really should have been measured directly. Lack of budget is one motivation for this, but so is the pervasive idea that computations can take the place of observations. There is also an unfortunate tendency throughout government, maybe throughout our society actually, that aggregation of data, which is what this study does, is better than just looking at individual observations.

The idea that siting too close to structures that operate heat-producing equipment biases maximum temperatures downward is counter-intuitive to say the least. Please show me a direct comparison, not aggregated, adjusted, grid area weighted values. Finally, what happens after change to “bad” conditions is complete is not the pertinent point, but rather what happens to the aggregated data during the change over.

The lead graph is accompanied on the NCDC site with an official uptrend estimate of 0.12F/Decade, but there is no standard error, let alone correction for serial correlation of the errors. Sounds like a good stats/econometrics exercise!

?? Is the last decade really the warmest for the century? According to my calibrated eyes, the decade 1929-1939 is not much, if any, cooler than 2000-2009. If the last decade is warmer, is it significantly warmer at the 95% level???

The NASA document referred to global temperatures; this article was only about the US.

RE Steve Goddard (10:10:17) :

Interesting how alarmists love to talk about the warm decade since 1998, but are completely disinterested in the actual trends during that decade. There was a step function upwards in 1998, and a strong slope downwards since. This is very significant.

Anyone who has lived in the interior of the US and has been paying attention for the last twelve years, is probably aware of the fact that temperatures have cooled dramatically and snowfall has greatly increased. Same for Alaska.

This is also true for the UK. Ten years ago I used to regularly see people water skiing on lakes around London in January with very mild weather. Temperatures the last two winters have been much colder, and summers have been very cool for the last three years.

Sometimes people need to step outside of their computers and statistics and get in touch with the real world.

Hi Deech! What is the rate of warming since 1998? Looks like you have a negative number there. I thought there was no cooling? At the least, it would seem, there has been no warming.

Hi Dave. I’m not the one making the cooling claim, so please take up your concerns with them. I will say that we have had significant global warming for the last 30 (or more) years, and that’s the relevant period to determine climate trends. You should be wary of anyone who picks 1998 as a starting point for any temperature trend.

If you go to the original website and re-plot that first graph with a trend line right the way through from 1895 to 2009, there is a small upward trend of 0.12 F per decade. Anybody got any comments about that trend line? Is it:

a) real but due to the end of the last little ice age
b) real and caused by AGW
c) wrongly calculated
d) meaningless because of data massage?

I would say it is not possible to tell whether we are looking at a linear trend or a slight oscillation. Any way you look at it, it doesn’t seem to be accelerating catastrophically and is not shaped like any hockey stick I ever met. I know it is only the US, (can that really be only 2% of the earth’s land mass?) but it is the best data from the most data points that we have.

1998 is a very significant year. There was a strong El Nino and a step function upwards. This is also very visible in UAH and RSS global data. It is very interesting that temperatures in the US have now returned to their pre-1998 values.

There is nothing arbitrary about looking at the trends since 1998, as one piece of this article.

Also, Deech, if 12 years is too short a time to be significant, why worry about the warmest decade** (10 years) on record?

** Your results may vary.

Apples and oranges. There’s a difference between doing a trend analysis and doing a straight comparison. You can test the significance of the temperature anomalies of the 2000s vs the 1990s using a t test (1990, 1991…1999 vs 2000, 2001…2009) – the p value I got was 0.001. That’s pretty significant.

Your regression analysis shows “that the EARTH in the new millennium has been getting COOLER with 0.78 °C per century.”

Not just the new millennium. Australia at least is 0.6-0.7 deg C COOLER so far this millennium than it was in 1881-1890.

While you have Excel up, run a check on data from these met stations in Oz via http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/index.shtml.
(You can cut and paste directly to Excel)
26026, 46043, 55023, 58012, 64008, 69018, 75031, 83025, 84016, 85096, 90015

These are remote met stations unlikely to be subjected to the heat-island effect. For that reason, data from the following city or airport stations should be ignored when estimating national or global trends:
38003, 61055, 66062, 80015, 86071, 94029

Using Excel again, you can check that these stations show a WARMING trend of about 1 deg. Spurious, of course.

You can use Excel again to check that the difference between the 2 estimates, remote vs. city/airport, is significant at a confidence level of 99.98% (z = 3.73). (See ref below).

So, to be sure, the heat-island effect matters a lot. It would be neat if an analysis of exclusively remote met stations was collated for all countries.

1998 is a very significant year. There was a strong El Nino and a step function upwards. This is also very visible in UAH and RSS global data. It is very interesting that temperatures in the US have now returned to their pre-1998 values. ”

It really is. As if El Nino brought up a lot of heat stored in deep ocean water and it took several years to cool the upper ocean layer down again. Is it known from which depths El Nino rises?

The proAGWs on here are truly thick. If you buy a car from some lot, then take the car back because it has real problems (that you’ve told the seller) and you witness him telling the same BS to another couple exactly as he did to you, and sells it to them, would you buy another car from this guy? Come on… scammers are scammers.

You can’t keep saying, ‘they did this, this and this, but, but, but, surely they didn’t mean to do it and this, and this must be okay’… WRONG. It all works together in the game of deception. Cap/Trade ISN’T a non-profit venture where the citizens are rewarded via the funds, or the planet is rewarded either… CO2 is necessary for abundant life on planet earth.

I may not know as much as others on here, but when I heard CapTrade was about CO2 and NOT REAL pollution, I was highly pissed off. CO2? Yet real pollution like Hg is being forced upon us in meds…and, CFLs have Hg and are 99% made in china; however, we end up with the pollution and economically sponsoring China. Remember Petrobras’ investors are heavily invested in ‘green’ as well. Google, Soros, and many others are investors in Petrobras (didn’t they take over enron’s assets? :)

Time to choose new term other than “robust”. The Michael Mann’s of the climate “science” community have degraded its meaning to where it now means “I’m right, you’re wrong, nya, nya, nya”.

I, and I suspect many others here, now regard any argument that uses it a fundamentally flawed, by virtue of its association with Mann.

Try “statistically meaningful” since that is apparently what you are referring to.

Otherwise I agree with your point. Twelve years, heck even 20 years, is not a statistically meaningful period within which to make valid claims about long term climate fluctuations.

That does not however mean that a twelve year trend is not relevant, just that it is not long enough to devine the future. Similarly the thirty years since 1980 are not sufficiently long to predict the next 100 years – just better than the last 12.

Seriously, will you guys ever learn that local weather is NOT global climate?

Why don’t you do the same thing for the Southern Hemisphere? Show us what happened in the REST of the world besides the US.

I also note that these two cold years… are still HOTTER than at any time prior to 1998, and occured during both a La Nina and a nearly unprecedented solar minimum and yet they didn’t even manage to get as cold as the long term average?

Sounds to me like natural variation is struggling to hide the global warming signal now. The coldest it gets, is only just enough to offset the warming.

As for people talking about the last 12 years – you simply look like idiots when you keep pulling that rat out of your bag. For the late comers here is a brief explanation of why anyone pointing at that is not only an idiot, but is a liar too:

1998 was the result of one of the strongest El Nino’s we’ve seen, and was much warmer than even the global warming trend would have caused without it. These idiots have been told this for 12 years, they KNOW this, but they KEEP pushing the same old lie that the world has gotten cooler since then. To do that, they have to point at a year that was below the trend due to natural variability as well… La Nina and solar minimum.

Only by starting at a well above trend point, and ending at a below trend point, can they show a downward trend.

Make it a 10 year trend or a 15 year trend and you see that despite the outliers, the trend is still upwards… which is why the last decade is the hottest on record.

They have to cherry pick like a pack of inbred retards to get something even close to what they want – and even then it doesn’t really show anything.

No one ever said temperatures could not go down for short periods. In fact if they hadn’t gone down during La Nina and solar minimum, we’d be in REAL trouble, because at that point the global warming ‘signal’ would have swamped the natural variation ‘noise’ and would be a sign that it is too late.

One last point – global warming leads to warmer air temperatures, which leads to greater water vapour concentration which leads to greater precipitation and snowfall. Global warming can and does lead to localised lower temperatures and greater rain and snow fall. The latter does not preclude the former… it supports it.

In a half dozen years or so, when we hit the next solar maximum, and if there is an El Nino again, will these idiots accept the ten years prior to that as proof that global warming is real? Or will they complain about cherry-picked data?

My money is on them “forgetting” how they cherry picked 1998 for their start point when 1998 is no longer the hottest year (or nearly so) on record.

Kevin Kilty (10:18:04) :
“There is also an unfortunate tendency throughout government, maybe throughout our society actually, that aggregation of data, which is what this study does, is better than just looking at individual observations.”

I agree. Regional studies, are much more informative than an artificial “aggregation of data” using homogenization and other dubious “tricks”.

I read the following yesterday in Menne (2010): “Such a phenomenon has been observed at urban stations whereby once a site has become fully urbanized, its trend is similar to those at surrounding rural sites [e.g., Boehm, 1998; Easterling et al. 2005].”

With the caveat that I haven’t yet read Boehm or Easterling, I call BS on sites becoming “fully urbanized” (i.e., UHI saturation). After 123 years, San Antonio, TX has yet to become “fully urbanized”, and a comparison to surrounding (cooling) rural sites clearly shows this. SA continues to expand upward and outward. The San Antonio International Airport (where the temperature sensor is located) is currently adding a 3rd terminal, and a new freeway interchange (about a mile from the sensor) was recently completed. Perhaps some airports (and other weather station sites) stop growing and become UHI saturated, but I doubt that is true of most.

Anthony – have you written any comments about the Menne et al. paper anywhere, or will you do so? I’d be interested to hear what you think about their reasoning and their use of your data.

REPLY: Yes I plan to. – A

LOL. Looks like the whole surfacestations project got scooped.

I hardly think this is over. At first read, and I haven’t looked at all the supporting documents, it seems the Menne et al paper involves the homogenization issue at least, and perhaps all of the other serial correction issues. These corrections might still be done out of order, which smears UHI throughout the data, and so perhaps it is no surprise that the aggregated sets that Menne et al look at show similar trends.

On a separate thread Anthony has answered quite well by showing the site picture and graph for Detroit Lakes. That ought to make any sentient being pause and think again.

What are these “degrees Fahrenheit” you guys speak of? One of these days your mob is going to have to come out of the dark ages with respect to measurement systems. Why make life more difficult for yourselves? Even the English dropped that farcical system that you cling to. I thought you tossed the poms out a few hundred years ago?

If someone starts quoting G in furlongs per fortnight squared I am going to borrow the Oracle’s zot wand.

At the rate that NASA are dropping thermometers that don’t toe the party line, in a few years they will be left with just one thermometer at the bottom of Kilauea to measure the average temperature for the planet. After that they will need to underground nuclear testing. Then what?

If you go to the original website and re-plot that first graph with a trend line right the way through from 1895 to 2009, there is a small upward trend of 0.12 F per decade. Anybody got any comments about that trend line? Is it:

a) real but due to the end of the last little ice age
b) real and caused by AGW
c) wrongly calculated
d) meaningless because of data massage?

I would say it is not possible to tell whether we are looking at a linear trend or a slight oscillation. Any way you look at it, it doesn’t seem to be accelerating catastrophically and is not shaped like any hockey stick I ever met. I know it is only the US, (can that really be only 2% of the earth’s land mass?) but it is the best data from the most data points that we have.

Veronica, When I do the calculations of US data from 1895, I get a slope of about 0.053 deg C/decade. This slope is significant at p<0.0001. To look at reasons, you have to look at the models, and we know that from about 1950 you need to include anthropogenic forcings to account for the global temperature changes.

If your looking for oscillations, you need to do a Fourier transform, and it’s been a few decades. I do linear regressions in my work, so that (along with basic stats) is something that has stayed fresher in my memory.

Before starting your ridiculous rant, you might have taken the time to read the article and think.

According to NCDC, 2009 was the 33rd warmest year in the US, which means that there were 31 years prior to 1998 that were warmer. This is blatantly obvious from the first graph. 2008 was even cooler. 2009 was a warm El Nino year, not a La Nina year. WUWT has had numerous articles in recent weeks about temperatures in other parts of the world, and Europe has been having the coldest winter in decades.

Time to choose new term other than “robust”. The Michael Mann’s of the climate “science” community have degraded its meaning to where it now means “I’m right, you’re wrong, nya, nya, nya”.

I, and I suspect many others here, now regard any argument that uses it a fundamentally flawed, by virtue of its association with Mann.

Try “statistically meaningful” since that is apparently what you are referring to.

No, what they mean by robust is that the conclusions are still correct even if the data is garbage and the procedures a sham. What robust is supposed to mean is that the conclusions are correct even if some of the assumptions are not strictly so.

A few simple questions:
AGW states that the planet heats up.
Where is the heat right now?
Does it hide?
Where does it hide?
If it’s not there ATM, where has it gone?
Into space?
When it can go into space, it should be able to do so in the future again.
When it can’t go into space, then where is it?

RE Doug in Seattle (11:38:49) :Time to choose new term other than “robust”. The Michael Mann’s of the climate “science” community have degraded its meaning to where it now means “I’m right, you’re wrong, nya, nya, nya”.
I could have been a little more blunt and said that any conclusion that changes when the starting year is changed by one is “Epic Fail”.

That does not however mean that a twelve year trend is not relevant, just that it is not long enough to devine the future. Similarly the thirty years since 1980 are not sufficiently long to predict the next 100 years – just better than the last 12.

No, you don’t even have enough information to make a conclusion about that period of time. The future is not based on an extrapolation of past data but on modeling physical processes. You can get a rough estimate of future temperature trends by just knowing the climate sensitivity (3 degC/doubling at equilibrium). If we do nothing, we will reach a doubling of CO2 over pre-inidustrial levels by 2050 and a quadrupling by 2100 (of course, the wheels will fall off the bus way before that).

Seriously, will you guys ever learn that local weather is NOT global climate; unless it is a hurricane, a drought, a flood, a disease, a sand storm, kidney stones, forest fire, melting glacier, tornado, ice storm, wind bag, ….

Sorry, we just do not believe anything any of you say any more. You lie and you know that you lie, and we know it too.

Hansen at al have created the view of climate change as being linear. But history shows us that it is cyclical. People are always trying to do linear fits of temperature data, but perhaps it is a sine wave with 1998 as the peak? In that case a 12 year trend is much more indicative of the future than a 30 year trend.

Time to choose new term other than “robust”. The Michael Mann’s of the climate “science” community have degraded its meaning to where it now means “I’m right, you’re wrong, nya, nya, nya”.

I could have been a little more blunt and said that any conclusion that changes when the starting year is changed by one is “Epic Fail”.
That does not however mean that a twelve year trend is not relevant, just that it is not long enough to devine the future. Similarly the thirty years since 1980 are not sufficiently long to predict the next 100 years – just better than the last 12.
No, you don’t even have enough information to make a conclusion about that period of time. The future is not based on an extrapolation of past data but on modeling physical processes. You can get a rough estimate of future temperature trends by just knowing the climate sensitivity (3 degC/doubling at equilibrium). If we do nothing, we will reach a doubling of CO2 over pre-inidustrial levels by 2050 and a quadrupling by 2100 (of course, the wheels will fall off the bus way before that).

Karmakaze, please leave the name calling to the owner of this eponymous site. It distracts from the content in your comment. Even if you were Australian, and object to a commentator from another country calling your prime minister, shall we say, ‘less than intelligent’, it still doesn’t excuse it. The comments here shouldn’t cast aspersions on persons.

Concentrate the criticism on unsubstantiated conclusions, cherry picked observations, and overstated projections not supported by facts. There is plenty of targets in this post without stooping to the levels that some at this site fall to.

In the Slavic languages they commonly say not “you are wrong”, instead they say “you have that incorrect” to differentiate between a person and an idea, observation, or conclusion. Let us stay attuned to addressing mistaken information, and not attacking people in the process, no matter how much we believe the other deserves such a personal attack.

Department of Duh. It turns out that the Catlin expedition equipment failure was due to the battery. (…)

This is, flat out, unbelievable.

If your car is not working, the interior light doesn’t even turn on, you check the battery. If your PC doesn’t turn on, you check if it is plugged in. They were prepared to service the equipment, thus they should have had at least a small multi-tester that could check if the battery was providing power. They were flying in replacement parts, and it never occurred to them to try a different battery?

Since checking if the equipment is getting power at all is so blazingly obvious, possibly they were getting some power but the equipment still did not work. They were complaining about the fuses in the battery. For one thing, internal fuses for a battery is a ridiculous concept, external fusing is what is used. So perhaps they were referring to fuses in an enclosure that was part of the battery housing. Logically they would be swappable to allow for replacement. If the equipment failed the first time it was used, the fuse blew, then there would have been no power from the battery, which can be easily checked. Fuses are generally made to make it easy to see that they blew, and a tester can check them. The only way “different fuses” makes anything like sense is if the new ones had a lower current rating. Thus the manufacturer output specs would be different, which should have been noted, and there would still be a blown fuse.

In any case, the battery stopped providing power, so swapping the battery should have been thought of.

I can clearly see why they are not naming the manufacturer of the battery, as trying to pin this failure on a certain manufacturer would be strong grounds for a libel suit. Moreover this shows such a lack of competence in the most basic of diagnostic procedures, so truly embarrassing, I actually wonder if this was deemed the “least possible stupidity” that they decided to “reveal” to cover up something immensely idiotic.

A different instrument had cables snapping. The excuses summarize as “well, it worked in the lab.” They do realize “logical responses” like that lead to people dying in the real world, right?

I’ve read the paper. Where’s the graphs? Where’s the data? I have an aversion to papers that “tell” me the results, but don’t show it. And they say they used unadjusted data vs homogenized. Does this mean they used missing data infilled and TOBS. It usually does. I’ll tell you what, write to them for the answers to those questions and for the graphs of the original data. Then we’ll talk.

Well, as Oliver Hardy used to say to Stan in the Laurel and Hardy movies, “this is another fine mess you got us into” Here is where I think we are today:
1. The peer review process of research papers on climate has been so tainted that it may be hard to find an honest set of reviewers.
2. Some of the data on temperatures may need to be completely reworked to eliminate systematic bias in the data including a review of the sites and methods used to measure temperature. New sites may be needed too.
3. The temperature data base needs to be recompiled so that data excluded by NASA, and others who manipulated the data to give a biased result.
4. The scientific community is polarized into warmists and deniers that will make genuine communication difficult, yet they need each other to straighten out the mess.
5. The IPCC bureaucrats see their climate ATM is in sad disrepair and may be out of money which means that climate research will take a big hit
6. The mainstream media apparently think that the situation on climate is result of a few disgruntled scientists who did not get funded by NASA or CRU.
7. The science of climate has several viable theories with alternative explanations for why the climate did or will change besides AGW.
8. The exposure of the e-mails from NASA and CRU have given the public the impression that most scientists cannot be trusted because they have a political agenda or just are bully each other to get grants.
9. There is a tendency of some scientists to disregard the fact that statistical analyses are probabilistic and therefore not absolute in their predictions.
10. Ninety percent of the public do not have the capacity to understand the debates about climate science and the multitude of theories that have been advanced to explain why climate has changed
11. The tendency of those who are studying climate to use statistical correlations between variables such as average global temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to prove that there is a real but unknown physical mechanism connecting them. Then massive but overly simplistic computer program is written to justify the correlations
12. The last point is that extrapolation of data, no matter how reliable, into the future is questionable unless there is a clear understanding of the mechanism that are controlling the parameter being extrapolated.
Please feel free to add or delete any of these items. Can we cleanup this mess? If so, what can I do?

One of the best reasons to pick 1998 right now is it starts and ends with a significant El Nino. More of an apples to apples comparison. If we move into a La Nina period then the comparison period should be adjusted.

Deech56 (11:08:14) :

I will say that we have had significant global warming for the last 30 (or more) years, and that’s the relevant period to determine climate trends.

Exactly how would anyone ever conclude that a fraction of a degree is “significant”. Boogles the mind … all I can do is shake my head in wonderment.

Not only that, it’s probably the worst period to choose if you’re interested in being accurate. It’s pretty much aligned with the positive PDO and a fairly active sun. We really need 60 years minimum to understand climate. Any institution with 60 years of data available that does not use a full 60 years as a baseline is clearly biased. This includes both GISS and HadCru. I would also prefer to see UAH move to its full 30 years of data as the baseline.

global warming leads to warmer air temperatures, which leads to greater water vapour concentration which leads to greater precipitation and snowfall. Global warming can and does lead to localised lower temperatures and greater rain and snow fall. The latter does not preclude the former… it supports it.

In 1947 in the UK there was 10 times as much snow as there was in 2010, according to Philip Eden,(who is retiring vice president of the UK Met Office), in the UK’s Sunday Telegraph on January 17, 2010. Does that mean there was greater global warming going on then in the UK?

Please point me to a weather forecast which goes out twelve years,or even two years. If you know anything about weather/climate forecasting you would know that weather forecasts extend rfom three days to an absolute maximum of two weeks. Any government forecasts beyond two weeks are handled by climate people, like the CPC – Climate Prediction Center.

Two years of cool temperatures is not “weather” by anyone’s definition. “Weather” is what is going to happen at your picnic, ski area or beach this weekend.

The heavy snowfalls in North America and Europe in recent years have been associated with unusually cold temperatures, not warm temperatures. A couple of years ago, alarmists were flaunting predictions of warm temperatures, dying ski areas due to lack of snow, drought, etc. Now they are claiming the cold and snow is due to global warming. Slippery characters at best.

I get a little testy about all the Global warming Hyperbole. When as a Mid-western Farmer we are close to not even having enough heat units to continue to raise corn. 2009 was the coldest summer in recorded history. If it gets even a little bit colder major crop failures could be a real danger. Later dates in the spring for frost and earlier dates in the fall would all spell food shortages for humans. We should not fear higher temps during this interglacial period that is normal and helpful to food production, as is higher Co2/air/plant-food. What to fear would be cooler temps and real not imagined crop failures all over the globe. Warmth doe not kill, frosts do…..Sincerely, John

Leave it to NOAA to not know the difference between below normal due to Arctic Air Mass and somewhat above normal due to Pacific Rain Storms.
That should at least balance California out to be ‘normal’ to slightly below normal.

I’m trying to get my head around your logic; it seems to be something like this:

its got warmer for the last 2 decades

therefore

its going to keep on getting warmer for ever and ever.

“the bear came over the mountain
the bear came over the mountain
the bear came over the mountain to see what he could see;
the other side of the mountain
the other side of the mountain
the other side of the mountain was all that he could see”

The interesting thing is that the charts are showing the U.S. is cooling but they have temperatures that show the overall globe still warming.
….
The AGW crowd tells me the US only makes up 2% of the Global Surface, but the US does not exist in a vacuum. The masses of air that move over the US come from somewhere. I just find it odd that the actual meaured temperature is cooling (US) but the Global temps show increase and most the grids are not based on actual temperature readings but mathematical guesses of what the “real” temperature would be if you took a reading.

———-

Don’t forget Canada. I’m sure our temperature trends are not that different from those experienced by the U.S. Eastern Canada also had no summer last year. While the U.S. landmass as a percentage of the Global Surface is only 2%, Canada has another 7%, making a total of 9% for North America exluding Mexico. That’s a respectable sized chunk of the earth.

Kukla pointed to two things as conditions for a return to a glacial period – a low obliquity and perihelion in NH winter. Right now one of those conditions is met – perihelion at Jan 7 2010 – but the other is not, obliquity while falling is above its midpoint.

John from MN (14:22:54) :
“ Later dates in the spring for frost and earlier dates in the fall would all spell food shortages for humans.”

“If you go back and check records for early frost in Iowa and Minnesota, you find that the Labor day frost of 1974 , has a matching early frost that occurred in 1915 almost 60 years before 1974. The next 60 year early frost after the year 1974 should occur in the year 2034.
There also seems to be a pattern of a 21 year cycle of early frosts. Years in that cycle pattern include 1953-1974-1995 and should again occur in 2016.
If you check the growing degree days for each state you will notice that Michigan and North Dakota are ahead of normal in growing degree days for the year 2008, so not all of the northern corn and bean states are at risk for an early frost this fall.
One last cycle of cold weather that does not indicate an early frost is the 30 year cycle. This is a long term cycle and dead center years in that cycle would be 1963-1993 and should next occur in 2023.”
From: http://www.marketforum.com/?d=ft&id=979198

If we get Labor Day frost in Iowa and Minnesota in 2016 then the world grain supply will not last until the following year’s harvest. Tens of millions will starve.

“If you based a long term climate forecast on the length of solar cycles, you might actually do pretty well.”

You are likely correct, but that is not my writing, it was from a farmer in 2008 talking amount the harvest and the pricing.

“The Hindu reports today that 25% of US grain is going to biofuels, instead of feeding people.”

I know, and the CRU is partly funded by companies that do ”Food to Ethanol” like Broom’s Barn Sugar Beet Research Centre and Tate and Lyle. Probably because the marketing line is that Ethanol produces less CO2 then petrol. But we know that is also produces less power per unit volume, thus it is a wash in the end.

Seriously, will you guys ever learn that local weather is NOT global climate?

Why don’t you do the same thing for the Southern Hemisphere? Show us what happened in the REST of the world besides the US.

I also note that these two cold years… are still HOTTER than at any time prior to 1998

Bull feathers! On Christmas Day 1966, we were playing baseball in short sleeved shirts in Illinois. On Christmas Day 1965,we were ice skating on creeks and water puddles in fields which were frozen completely solid for a period of weeks in Illinois and Kentucky. The Arctic deep freeze was coming down out of Canada and freezing everything solid down to the Mason-Dixon line and farther south. Some of the shallower lakes had to be restocked because of the fish kill resulting from the cold weather.

In the Summer of 1934, the creeks and rivers around Albany, Kentucky and Byrdstown, Tennessee were virtually dried up at times, and some of the wells failed to supply enough water. Temperatures in Cairo, Egypt soared, and the Argentine pampas agriculture suffered from the heat. It was as warm or warmer in the years around 1934 s the hottest years around 1998. In June 1966, a heat wave resulted in official air temperatures of 106F and unofficial air temperatures of 136F underneath the steel roof of the barn where we were putting up the hay bales we had just harvested.

Yes, weather is local. The global climate, is nonetheless, a global sum of that local weather occurring around the globe. When the sum of the local weather around the globe is different than what occurred in another time period, the difference is reflected in more of the local weather around the globe as a difference in global climate. Consequently, some local weather does indeed reflect changes in global climate when the local weather is a manifestation of such changes to the sum of the local weather constituting the global climate.

Such was the case in the Summer of 1978, when the local weather in Southern California, Northern California, Washington, Illinois, New York, England, Scotland, Wales, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Greece, Egypt, India, and Japan were so unseasonably cold and rainy for most of the summer season. Crossing the English Channel was a bone chilling experience on 6 June 1978, much the same as it was cold and rainy during the D-Day invsion of 6 June 1944. It was often described in 1978 as the year without a summer by radio and television commntators as I traveled around the world that year. This extraordinarily cold summer weather around the Northern Hemisphere followed closely upon the heels of the hot drought of 1976.

There are currently no reliable datasets of the global air temperatures suitable for global climate research. The original records were never intended to be used for or recorded with the accuracy required for reliable global scale climate research. The observational records which have been put to use for climate research have been improperly and heavily redacted using methods which guarantee a warm bias in the latter period/s. Access to the original observational records have been made relatively inaccessible for most practical purposes, and entirely inaccessible for those which are being deliberately and/or non-deliberately destroyed by records retention policies and/or negligence. Some of these original mnuscript records are reportedly being destroyed by insect larvae eating the papers in the archives. The summaries used to create the datasets do not disclose the full temperature records, and the numbers taken from the summaries have been repeatedly adjusted and otherwise altered without maintaining a change log or other audit trail to permit a reconstruction of the original values or numbers taken from the summaries. In other words, the governmental agencies responsible for the datasets used to compute the global mean air temperature values have lost the original raw observation values and are now working only with numerical values they have invented by alterations to the original values. Using their invented numerical values for global air temperatures, they then dropped the vast majority of the invented values for the surface observation stations, with an even greater proportion of the absent station records coming from the coldest global locations in the latter time periods. Omitting the coldest observational records in the global summary has the inevitable effect of making the global sum and average of temperatures appear hotter than would otherwise have been the case if those colder observational stations and records also been included in the latter time periods.

When you read the Menne et al paper and pay close attention to the Methods in particular, you can see how the paper once again reaches false conclusions by erroneous manipulations of already faulty datasets.

I understand surfacestations.org has surveyed all, or nearly all US stations, and am aware that Anthony Watts promised to do a comparative analysis based on the best stations when 75% of stations had been surveyed. This is the final step, the necessary finishing touch to this excellent project, to see whether adjustments have introduced a spurious warming trend for the contiguous US (and is applicable to the topic of this and many previous threads).

Can anyone direct me to this final important step? It didn’t appear in the Heartland Institute booklet written by Mr Watts. Is there a dedicated thread or something, like the one at climateaudit a couple of years ago, where John V and steve mosher were doing the analysis?

A quantitative analysis and comparison is an absolute must to finalise the project. Has someone crunched the numbers, or will someone advise when this may happen?

It makes no difference when you pick the date from. If you take the time to look at the first graph, it is flat even with the tiny X Axis. Why not pick the start point as the start of the MWP? or immediately after.

Even including the before and after of the MWP the graph would be flat, possibly slightly down. It shows that CAGW is cobblers, ( apologies to the moderators, I hope “cobblers” doesn’t infringe your policy ), it’s a fallacy.

You can obfuscate and lie as much as you like, what it boils down to is you are peddling a big fat lie.

D. Patterson (15:43:14) :
These comments are merely anecdotal evidence, and the anecdotal evidence you cite conflicts with my life experience. There are biological indicators and most contradict your findings.

What the Menne et. al. paper did, was put the final nail in the hypothesis that mis-leading temperature monitors are responsible for the warming trend. In case you missed it, the paper shows the poorly designed stations would actually have a cooling effect versus the better designs.

There was no content to your comment to address. Would you care to put something in your next comment that isn’t just opinion, so that we can decide to give up some of our time, to examine the information and try to understand it?

Steve Goddard (15:14:28) :
“If you based a long term climate forecast on the length of solar cycles, you might actually do pretty well.”

Do you realize that if we could dispose of the AGW thing and present some real information like that to farmers about what the coming year would be like then that would be information that they actually could use. For short season years they could put in short season crops, longer crops in longer season years. It would be better to bring a smaller mature crop of something then have a frozen immature crop in the field.
But a field of corn or soy beans or rye is not as lucrative as carbon credit trading.

It is this kind of thing that makes me most upset about this abasement of science, it may be possible to provide good and useful information to the people that can actually use it but the fog of AGW prevents it from getting out.

They have no science to be contested, only fiction; and they have no shame.

Smart nations at this point, having read through what you posted, will immediately set to work stockpiling coal reserves and investing in massive greenhouse projects. A return to that “Bond Event” would cripple any nation in the temperate zones not prepared for it. The winters are still leapfrogging from one hemisphere to the next in a ‘top this’ contest, and that is not good news. In addition, SC24 is lackluster in progress, and SC25 is projected to follow suit and be even weaker by the few Solar Scientists who didn’t totally miss the boat.
There are enough indications of where we are currently headed to start making preparations. I’ve seen enough.

I really don’t understand why the author of this post didn’t respond in kind to the NASA report. Instead of global temperatures, the post used US temperatures, and instead of a comparison of the decade of the 90s to the last decade, there was a discussion primarily of the last two years.

So lets get back on target here, and address the issue instead of running away from it. Here are the relevant questions regarding the NASA press release on the Hottest Decade Ever:

1. Do other global temperature records show that the last decade was hotter than the 1990s? Since the UAH dataset seems preferred here, what does the UAH data show? My printout of the monthly UAH global temperature anomalies show the 1990s were clearly not as hot as the last decade, confirming the GISS data. And since this is satellite derived data, any concerns about land station measurements aren’t an issue. Why didn’t the post address the UAH record? (Maybe it didn’t show what was wanted in the post?)

2. If we do limit ourselves to the US mainland (only a few percent of the Earth’s surface) what does the comparison of the 1990s to the latest decade show? Although a calculated and statistically checked response is preferred, the graph in this post shows clearly the latest decade was hotter.

If we were to use the US record on its own, since it is such a small portion of the plant, rather than compare the last ten years to the previous ten years, it would give a much better signal if we could use a longer period. So lets compare the last 15 years with the previous 15 years, since our areal coverage is so limited. But yikes, now we see almost runaway heating in the US!!! Clearly something not suitable for a WUWT post.

3. Well OK, this is all backward looking, how about this year 2010? Do we expect a hot year or not? This issue was addressed over on the Tisdale post, and guess what? Some people think that because of long term heating due to AGW, topped by the El Nino impact this year, that there is somewhere between a 50% (Hansen) to 90% (see link on Tisdale post) chance that the global temperature anomaly will set a new HIGH TEMPERATURE record this year! And in fact, the UAH monthly anomaly apparently is going to set a January record THIS month. The previous monthly anomaly record in the UAH dataset was just last November!!!

Hmmm, with all this information, now observers can look at just how carefully this post was crafted, to select information that could be sold to the gullible, and avoid confirming the Hottest Decade statement by NASA. A good try, but it will only be believed by those who already were pre-disposed to believe it. The post doesn’t stand up to any real analytical examination.

REPLY: Paul K: Your post might have merit if anybody but the small cadre people like yourself actually believed GISS anymore. So, your clever constructs here on how you want the post to be written really don’t apply. Also, I booted you off WUWT once for your trolling, here and because of the things you say elsewhere about me. So here we are again, with you under a new handle. Get your own blog, write your views there all you wish, but stop clogging up mine with your constructs about “crafting”. I write about things that interest me, I find this interesting, and so do my readers. You don’t like what I write and never will and that’s fine, now run back to Taminoland and whine there. – Anthony

The Hindu reports today that 25% of US grain is going to biofuels, instead of feeding people.

Steve, the corn that goes into ethanol is feed corn. In fact, there has always been much more US acreage planted with field corn than in the food varieties. In addition, after the oil is taken out of the corn the rest is still sold as feedstock. There has been very little reduction in US grain production of food varieties. If there was then corn would sell for a lot more than $3 and change.

I am firmly in the camp that ethanol is not an efficient source of energy and other bio-fuels, like algae, look more promising. However, we should try to keep the facts straight.

In actual fact, skeptics don’t like talking about the coolest/warmest year/decade etc This phenom was introduced by the alarmists to “prove” AGW. Since the origins of AGW alarmism, skeptics have been (as you would expect) reactionary to claims by alarmists. Put simply, alarmists started it.

“They have to cherry pick like a pack of inbred retards to get something even close to what they want – and even then it doesn’t really show anything”

I’m sure you are referring to the tight knit clique of Jones Mann Briffa Hansen et al. Check out the many climategate emails as proof. Cherry picking of tree rings, cherry picking of bristlecone pines, cherry picking of weather stations, cherry picking of baselines for trends, cherry picking of research papers admitted into IPCC reports, cherry picking of reviewers for submitted papers, cherry picking of scientists used to further their agenda and most importantly CHERRY PICKING OF CLIMATE FORCINGS. (they left out the big orange in the sky and those fluffy white candy floss)

“Seriously, will you guys ever learn that local weather is NOT global climate?”

Maybe you can tell us all what “Global Climate” really is.

“Only by starting at a well above trend point, and ending at a below trend point, can they show a downward trend”.

Glad you brought that up. Can you explain to us “idiots” why it’s ok to claim global warming, starting at the very end of the little ice age? then continue explaining why it’s not ok to start “Global Cooling” at the end of a warm period (1998)
What’s good for the GOOSE…..

This article presents NCDC data about US temperatures and trends. That is it’s only intent. Not every article has to be a battle against Hansen.

BTW- As soon as El Nino fades in the spring, satellite temperatures will go down – just like they did in 2007 after a very warm January. Keep hoping for your “record hot” year though, and stay warm in the meantime.

The lead graph is accompanied on the NCDC site with an official uptrend estimate of 0.12F/Decade, but there is no standard error, let alone correction for serial correlation of the errors. Sounds like a good stats/econometrics exercise!

Thanks, Hu. Ah, I noticed that the chart is for the NCDC temps and I’ve been using the NASA-GISS numbers (since I can get the numbers off the site easily). Glad to get the link. I did download these data and did a few calculations.

From 1895 the slope is 0.12 deg F/decade (or 0.067 deg C) and the SE is 0.02 def F/decade. A little higher than NASA-GISS over the same period. The t statistic is 5.59 with 113 degrees of freedom, so the slope is significant at p<0.0001.

So since 1998? Slope of -1.03 deg F/decade with SE of 0.46 deg F/decade. t Statistic is 2.216 with 10 degrees of freedom. To achieve significance at p<0.05, t would have to be 2.228 or greater. Ooh, so close, but if you include one more year (1997) the bottom drops out – t statistic is 0.83. You gain one more degree of freedom, but the p<0.05 cutoff is only lowered to 2.201. I have it on reasonable authority that if annual means are used, the autocorrelation is minimal, but with t equal to 5.59, we are far from borderline.

OK, all this is using Excel's LINEST and TINV functions. I'm not a statistician, but I did take the grad school equivalents of Stats 101 and 102 (linear regression – yes, a whole semester of it) and these are fairly straightforward analyses. If someone wants to verify, please do so.

The reason I've spent so much time on this is that I hope the readers understand that when someone bases their conclusion on a temperature chart starting in 1998, they are not telling you the full story. Please think twice before nodding in agreement. (Now let's see whether I screwed up the HTML.)

>> Deech56: Veronica, When I do the calculations of US data from 1895, I get a slope of about 0.053 deg C/decade. This slope is significant at p<0.0001. To look at reasons, you have to look at the models, and we know that from about 1950 you need to include anthropogenic forcings to account for the global temperature changes. <<

In any case, the pre-1979 global (pre satellite) measurements are all but worthless. There were no good temperature records covering the oceans (70% of the planet) until the satellite measurements, and also large gaps in the land coverage.

We can discuss the US records, which is what is done here. They are at least continuous and have reasonable spatial coverage. The temperatures since 1998 show cooling down to the century-plus average. So do the temperatures since 2001, which excludes the El Nino peak. Unlike the Warmists, no one here is extrapolating that cooling out to claim that we're going to have catastrophic cold by 2100.

One of the best reasons to pick 1998 right now is it starts and ends with a significant El Nino. More of an apples to apples comparison. If we move into a La Nina period then the comparison period should be adjusted.

C’mon, people were all over the place saying that it has been cooling since 1998 even before the current El Niño. 1998 gets picked because people who ant to “show” temperature dropping want to start with a high year. For noisy data like surface temperature, any 10-12 period is too short to show significance.

Deech56 (11:08:14) :

“I will say that we have had significant global warming for the last 30 (or more) years, and that’s the relevant period to determine climate trends.”

Exactly how would anyone ever conclude that a fraction of a degree is “significant”. Boogles the mind … all I can do is shake my head in wonderment.

Not only that, it’s probably the worst period to choose if you’re interested in being accurate. It’s pretty much aligned with the positive PDO and a fairly active sun. We really need 60 years minimum to understand climate. Any institution with 60 years of data available that does not use a full 60 years as a baseline is clearly biased. This includes both GISS and HadCru. I would also prefer to see UAH move to its full 30 years of data as the baseline.

You can say a change in a fraction of a degree is “significant” because it is. “Significance” has a precise statistical meaning and just requires some calculations to show this. 30 years is usually the standard because with that many data points, the confidence interval becomes narrow enough to show the trend. Other measurements may require a shorter time period if they are less noisy.

The baseline is just used to calculate the anomaly, and choice of baseline will have no effect on the trend, which is really what we are interested in. Also, as I wrote before, if you want to invoke a cycle of some sort, do the Fourier transform.

“There has been very little reduction in US grain production of food varieties.”

THere has been very significant change. The biofuel production has increased the market price for corn. This results in more corn being planted on land that had been growing wheat and soy. That results in wheat and soy prices going up.

Want to know what the current USDA “surplus” food reserve is right now? Something close to ZERO. There is no longer any surplus of wheat and corn that can be sent to places experiencing famine. It’s simply doesn’t exist anymore. And what we consider to be “feed” or “field” corn is what is used for corn meal, corn oil, and things like corn chips and corn flakes. Once it is processed though a biofuel plant, the only thing it is good for is animal feed. There isn’t a market for Kellogg’s Biofuel Waste Flakes (yet).

But there is hope. Biofuel plants are shutting down and new construction is being halted because it hasn’t turned out to be as profitable as it was touted to be. It turns out that good old petroleum is a more efficient source of energy. It ends up costing energy to produce biofuel. You can’t get as much energy out of it as it takes to produce and distribute. A society that had nothing but biofuel available would run out of energy as it would take more fuel to produce and deliver it than it yields.

What happens is that when these harebrained politicians get on some bandwagon and authorize millions or billions in spending of taxpayer money, the economic reality eventually comes home to roost and the projects are put out of their misery.

The temperatures since 1998 show cooling down to the century-plus average. So do the temperatures since 2001, which excludes the El Nino peak. Unlike the Warmists, no one here is extrapolating that cooling out to claim that we’re going to have catastrophic cold by 2100.

No cooling since 1998, no cooling since 2001. Unless you can show me the stats, please don’t make that claim.

And at the risk of repeating myself, future temperatures are not based on extrapolating recent temperatures.

C’mon, people were all over the place saying that it has been cooling since 1998 even before the current El Niño. 1998 gets picked because people who ant to “show” temperature dropping want to start with a high year. For noisy data like surface temperature, any 10-12 period is too short to show significance.

Whether something has statistical meaning depends on many factors. Since we know about ~400 year periods like the LIA and MWP we might need a lot more data points than you think to achieve anything reasonable. Anyone can lie with statistics. I’ve done it many times myself just to make a point.

Don’t get caught up in some silly notion that 30 years is magic. I can get all kinds of data points driving up a mountain but it won’t tell me anything about where I will be when I finish the drive down the other side.

That’s one of the big problems in climate. The science has only some vague ideas about all the possible interactions. I still think it’s about at the same stage as medical research was in the 1960s.

“Significance” has a precise statistical meaning and just requires some calculations to show this. 30 years is usually the standard because with that many data points, the confidence interval becomes narrow enough to show the trend.

So we agree that saying the decade is the warmest on record** is just an exercise in hand waving?

And what is ‘precise statistical meaning’? That sounds like jumbo shrimp, corporate ethics, military intelligence, etc.

And at the risk of repeating myself, future temperatures are not based on extrapolating recent temperatures.

Are you sure? Just because it’s done using computer programs does not change the facts. The programs are set up with only one conclusion possible. Remember, they assume minimal natural climate factors. Hence, they program GGs and feedbacks as pretty much the only possible driver of temps. They base this on the homogenized temperature record.

In fact, I suspect I could come up with a linear transform from some of their model parameters to the amount of the warming projections.

Is anyone (I ask again) measuring average daily temperatures other than by adding the days’ maxima and minima and halving the totals?

Currently, a cloudy summer day which starts with an overnight low of 10C, reaches a steady 20C and, for ten cloudless minutes in the arvo, briefly reaches 26C, is recorded as having an average temperature of 18C; another day starts with an overnight low of 8C and reaches 26C and stays that warm for most of the day (and accodingly feels warmer, and is warmer than the previous day), but it is recorded as having an average temperature of 17C; a subsequent cloudless day, after an overnight low of 0C, from early in the morning reaches 32C and stays at that temperature until late in the evening, is recorded as having an average temperature of 16C.

We could suppose that if today’s temperatures dropped to -50C and then rose to 90C a statistician would tell me that the the average for the day was a pleasant 20C.

There must, surely, be a better way of measuring warmth and coolth than by simply averaging the extremes. I for one should like to see charts which show the range of temperature as well as as an average of the warmest parts of the day (the four highest hourly temperatures divided by 4, perhaps). Do such data already exist which could be tabulated thus?

I booted you off WUWT once for your trolling, here and because of the things you say elsewhere about me. So here we are again, with you under a new handle. Get your own blog, write your views there all you wish, but stop clogging up mine with your constructs about “crafting”. I write about things that interest me, I find this interesting, and so do my readers.

I think Paul K2 makes perfectly reasonably scientific analyses of how you choose to analyze the data, Anthony. You may not like it, and you may not like how he picks apart your methods. But to threaten him with with being booted off for any reason other than committing profanity or ad hominem attacks here strikes me as an attempt by you to silence the scientific inquiry.

REPLY: Oh please. Paul K has no interest in “scientific inquiry”, his mission and an anonymous commenter (under a new handle now) is that of what is called a “concern troll”. You’ll note that there are many other people that post comments here that I and others may disagree with but they don’t get booted, however Paul K has a history here of trying to spin things into the way he wants them, while blaming me for not writing them the way he wants them. I pointed out things published by NOAA/NCDC I thought were interesting, he turned into a nefarious “crafting” on my part. He’s been spewing loads of ad hominen elsewhere, and his purpose here is to setup situations under the “concern troll” guise. He’s simply not worth my time. Let him disagree elsewhere. He’s had plenty of say here, my choice to boot him. There’s a bout a half dozen people out of the thousands that comment here that I’ve made the same choice for, all with similar MO’s -A

The insane AGW driven mentality to convert food into low CO2 Ethanol is the problem. AGW proponents like you create the demand using scare tactics backed up by lies based of fiction and the companies that fund the fiction create the products and reap the profits.

“The price of raw sugar worldwide has increased to its highest level since 1981, as supply concerns grow. Global sugar prices have been pushed up by growing demand in Brazil for sugar to be turned into ethanol for vehicle fuel, and a sharp fall in production in India, the world’s largest sugar consumer.”

Actually, there’s a lot of cooling going on and stats to show it. You only need to look at the valid met stations for proof. I see from your posts that you hunger for number crunching so maybe you could run a check on the example Down Under (11:20:24).

Remote met stations were 0.6 deg C cooler this millennium than in 1881-1890.
Met stations in cities or airports overheated by about 1.6 deg C.
Applying the Test for Two Independent Variables, the difference between the two is significant at a confidence level of 99.98%. That’s significant. 90% wouldn’t do, except of course for the IPCC hell-bent on peddling its flights of fancy!

>> Deech56: And at the risk of repeating myself, future temperatures are not based on extrapolating recent temperatures. <<

The effect is the same. Future temperatures are based on a computer model where some parameters are calculated by using the increase in recent temperatures. Twelve years is sufficient to question the CO2-driven premise. One does not need as long a period to cast doubt on a theory as one does to verify it. As I said before, unlike the Warmist camp, no one here is claiming the ability to predict the future based on twelve years of cooling.

Time to abandon all the surface temperature monitoring and rely on satellite readings. Even Hansen admits that satellites are the best, but he cannot manipulate them the way he can surface readings. Satellites are the future, surface readings with all their known problems, as evidenced by the myriad corrections required belong in the Smithsonian museum.

They were complaining about the fuses in the battery. For one thing, internal fuses for a battery is a ridiculous concept,

Depends on the application; user-accessible contacts generally call for battery with internal fusing at some level … think: “product liability” when all else fails (contacts become inadvertently shorted) as inevitably SOMEONE will have that situation arise (I have, for instance, and it happened when ‘things met’ in my briefcase unknown to me until afterwards).

Deadman (19:26:31) : says “Is anyone (I ask again) measuring average daily temperatures other than by adding the days’ maxima and minima and halving the totals?”

I think the whole purpose of using the max and min daily temp average wasn’t to find the most precise actual daily temp, just a simplified method of getting a data point to use to compare other future and past points.

The complex method you propose may give you a more precise measure of a daily temp at some location but it woud require many more numbers for each reference point.

It does not matter if all you use is the average of high and low as long as all your reference points you are comparing are using the same consistent system.

The test is to see if the aveage temp is going up, down or staying the same. Carbon Dioxide will absorb infrared. This will cause some heat and the atmosphere will then radiate some of the heat back to earth rewarming the cooled ground. The AGW theory is not bad science to propose. The bad science is trying to force it into a fact by any means. Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere will act as warming influence but how much and what other cooling factors exist is a mystery. Manipulating data is the worst thing a scientist can do. Just give the Truth the best you are able in the humble mindset of a good scientist. Being aware that the human mind can’t know it all.

Deadman (19:26:31) : says “Is anyone (I ask again) measuring average daily temperatures other than by adding the days’ maxima and minima and halving the totals?”

I think the whole purpose of using the max and min daily temp average wasn’t to find the most precise actual daily temp, just a simplified method of getting a data point to use to compare other future and past points.

The complex method you propose may give you a more precise measure of a daily temp at some location but it woud require many more numbers for each reference point.

It does not matter if all you use is the average of high and low as long as all your reference points you are comparing are using the same consistent system.

Wanna bet it doesn’t matter? Have you ever checked to see whether or not an average of the MIN-MAX air temperatures are a reasonably accurate indicator to an accuracy of tenths of a degree or a whole degree C of the daily average heat content of the PBL (Planetary Boundary Layer) at an individual surface observation station when compared to the continuous daily air temperature record for the same station?

Not all surface weather observation stations use a LiG (Liquid in Glass) thermometer to measure air temperatures. Some observations are made with thermographs using a continuous [paper] strip recorder. When you watch the changes in air temperature occurring during a FROPA (Frontal Passage) or adiabatic winds gusting, you can see how very brief or brief special weather events can cause the recording of an extraordinary Minimum or Maximum daily air temperature for only a few minutes or a few hours of the day. If you average all of the temperatures each minute of the day, each half hour of the day, each 3 hours of the day, each 6 hours of the day, each 12 hours of the day, or the MIN-MAX of the day, doing so can result in minor or major differences in the computed daily average temperatures.

Some geographic locales and regions experience significantly more of these special weather events than others. In some of the temperate latitudes, for one example, frontal passages and/or thunderstorm activity with associated severe convective activity and temperature volatility can become so regular in a season, you can nearly set a clock by their regularity. TOBS adjustments typically distort the average temperature records in relation to the geographic patterns in which these brief temperature excursions occur.

What effect do you suppose a squall line of thunderstorms and a frontal passage with severe thunderstorm activity has upon historic air temperatures when there are historic differences in the amount of such storm activity depressing average air temperatures as the cold upper air goes into a downdraft to the surface weather stations more often in the past than the present or more often in the present than the past?

Depends on the application; user-accessible contacts generally call for battery with internal fusing at some level … think: “product liability” when all else fails (contacts become inadvertently shorted) as inevitably SOMEONE will have that situation arise (I have, for instance, and it happened when ‘things met’ in my briefcase unknown to me until afterwards).

Some applications call for “smart batteries” that require some sort of signal to trigger the full current release. For example, I carry a spare cellphone battery in a shirt pocket that could have loose change, no problems with it.

But as I was thinking of them, that would be a fuse inside the battery casing. Thus after one short or otherwise strong overload, you would have an otherwise good working battery permanently unusable due to an inaccessible fuse.

If you really wanted a dead-safe battery, and considering the likely industrial nature of a “brick-sized” battery, self-resetting circuit breakers could be used. Simple mechanical ones, as would be preferred for ruggedness, are generally heat triggered and best detect overloads, they would likely work better at arctic temperatures with fast resets, although they might also let through more current than the rating at those temps without proper calibration. There are also fast-acting magnetic breakers that detect shorts, and combination units like the normal ones found in home and commercial electrical panels.

If they were lazily saying “fuses” instead of “circuit breakers,” possibly I could see where that could be a problem. But then I would think the extreme cold could possibly keep a breaker from resetting or even tripping, not that it could affect the default closed-contact state and yield an open circuit with no power.

You can’t do statistics like that. Every global temperature point includes errors because it is an average of thousands of temperature stations, which you are not including in your statistics. This is why some global temperature graphs show confidence intervals, which you neglect.

You make good points and I am aware of these local variations (I have felt the sudden rapid drop in temp as a storm moves in and the warming after when the sun breaks back out).

But I am doing my own study of temps by logging daily temps (high-low) and observing record highs and lows. The daily log average (mean of high and low) is very variable in respect to the long term daily average for any given day. But the long term mean is very stable. I think when you start adding the many data points all the extreme fluctuations of the daily basis are smoothed out.

I also log the difference between the daily high and low. It has an extreme variance on the daily basis (anywhere from almost 30 F difference to just a few), but the average daily difference is very stable on a daily basis (around 19 or 20F). (For reference I live near Omaha Nebraska and am using this as my data base).

I also record the mean of the record high and low temp for a given day. The difference is considerable. January is up in the 60F range and lows are around -20F. The mean between the record high-low comes fairly close to the average daily mean.

I am more concerned with the extrapolation of unknown grid temps by using some measured temp several miles away. I think this is where you can run into your greatest errors made worse if you have a particular viewpoint you are trying to prove (if it be for warming or cooling you can eaisly bias the data when making a mathematical guess).

Thanks for you thoughts. I like the thought process on this web page. A lot of intelligent thinking people. Gives one hope for the Human Race!

C’mon, people were all over the place saying that it has been cooling since 1998 even before the current El Niño. 1998 gets picked because people who [w]ant to “show” temperature dropping want to start with a high year. For noisy data like surface temperature, any 10-12 period is too short to show significance.”

Whether something has statistical meaning depends on many factors. Since we know about ~400 year periods like the LIA and MWP we might need a lot more data points than you think to achieve anything reasonable. Anyone can lie with statistics. I’ve done it many times myself just to make a point.

Don’t get caught up in some silly notion that 30 years is magic. I can get all kinds of data points driving up a mountain but it won’t tell me anything about where I will be when I finish the drive down the other side.

That’s one of the big problems in climate. The science has only some vague ideas about all the possible interactions. I still think it’s about at the same stage as medical research was in the 1960s.

Let me expand on what I wrote. Anyone who chooses 1998 as a starting point to make any kind of conclusion is on thin ice. Why? Two reasons:

1. Almost any temperature trend using such a short period (1998-2009) will be statistically insignificant.

2. A change in starting year ±1 will affect the conclusion; therefore, the data are not robust.

Another point is the inconsistency in the arguments here – I read about doubt in any surface measurements, yet see people making all kinds of statements (“It’s cooling.”) based on these measurements. There is talk about the MIA and MWP and cycles (“…we know about ~400 year periods…”), but what are these conclusions based on? Nobody here likes the proxy records, so what other data are there? I won’t go into regional vs. global measurements.

And why the slam on medical research of the 1960s? We had antibiotics, vaccines for smallpox and polio and were developing vaccines against the other childhood diseases. The structure of DNA was known and the genetic code was being unraveled. The Surgeon General declared that smoking was harmful and the harmful effects of DDT were publicized. Of course we know more now, but the medical researchers were on the right path and were shown to be correct. There were naysayers back then, like the tobacco companies that waged a campaign to sow doubt about the science, but I’m not sure you want me to go down that path. Hmmm…maybe we are at the same stage as medical research back then.

>> Deech56: Another point is the inconsistency in the arguments here – I read about doubt in any surface measurements, yet see people making all kinds of statements (“It’s cooling.”) based on these measurements. <<

One does not have to believe the data presented by the person one is refuting in order to argue that they are inconsistent with the conclusion. If catastrophic global warming is occurring, then the US temperature would not be expected to sit at the long term average 32 years later, especially considering the large positive adjustment made to the temperature vs. time.

Oh please. Paul K has no interest in “scientific inquiry”, his mission and an anonymous commenter (under a new handle now) is that of what is called a “concern troll”. You’ll note that there are many other people that post comments here that I and others may disagree with but they don’t get booted, however Paul K has a history here of trying to spin things into the way he wants them, while blaming me for not writing them the way he wants them.

Oh please back at you: if the above were true for every post here, then you would be threatening most of your posters with banishment as well. When you write a post that purports to be science and use 1998 as a starting date for your analysis, you freely open yourself up to the scientific inquiry of “why 1998?” to every amateur (and maybe a few professionals) out there.

I see repeated un-scientific gibberish from a wide cross sections of individuals here and none of that seems to bother you except when poster in question hits the nerve of challenging you scientific methods.

And if you genuinely have a problem with the “anonymous commenter” then you should set up a robust registration system where you can verify identities. After all, on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog. Now excuse me while I dig up a bone in the yard and scratch some fleas.

Roger Sowell (09:19:55) :“dekitchen: interesting points. Still, how do climate scientists explain that parts of the earth are cooling, while CO2 continues to increase? Physics is impartial, and does not allow CO2 to work its warming in some areas but not in others. If CO2 causes warming, then that warming will be observed in all locations.

The fact that the U.S. is cooling, and has done so for more than a decade, indicates that something other than CO2 is responsible for temperature increases AND decreases.”

I agree with this, and it is a good proof that the CAGW hypothesis has been falsified. This hypothesis required that a massive amplification would take place to cause a sprial of ever warming temperatures, while the real world has started cooling.

It’s a great pity that we can no longer trust IPCC climate science even to do a simple thing, like giving a trustworthy estimate of global average temperature. It makes any solid scientific work on climate very difficult to do.

For what it’s worth, aol and bloggingstocks are touting stocks that will benefit from the cold weather, and how you too can get in on the action. Bloggingstocks mentions that the Farmer’s Almanac predicts more really cold weather before the winter is over.

I haven’t done a survey of all textbooks, but basic statistics books will often state a rule of thumb that t>2 is significant.”

Before you do the calculation, you have to choose a level of significance. That level depends on the problem. 2 Examples:

1) Chance of survival of an operation?
Sigma=2 if it is cancer, sigma=3 or more if it is just a mole.

2) Chance of having enough gas for a trip?
Sigma=2 if it is in a car, sigma=3 or more if it is in an airplane.

The important thing is to decide BEFORE doing the calculation, and NOT adabt the choice to the result.

In my experience, you pick the level of significance at 95% and the sidedness of the test ahead of time, but report the calculated p value if the result achieves significance. So the result would be either “not significant” or “p<0.0XX".

One does not have to believe the data presented by the person one is refuting in order to argue that they are inconsistent with the conclusion. If catastrophic global warming is occurring, then the US temperature would not be expected to sit at the long term average 32 years later, especially considering the large positive adjustment made to the temperature vs. time.

Who is saying that “catastrophic global warming” is occurring? You may expect temperatures in every 2% of the globe to track global temperatures, but I don’t know that this is the expectation of those who study climate.

What I see here is people saying the data are no good, but BTW, the data show cooling. The goal of science is to find the truth, and to put together a scientific viewpoint one has to have a coherent argument.

The insane AGW driven mentality to convert food into low CO2 Ethanol is the problem. AGW proponents like you create the demand using scare tactics backed up by lies based of fiction and the companies that fund the fiction create the products and reap the profits.

I think your confused. I’ve never been an AGW proponent. I simply like to look at all things based on the facts. In fact, that’s why I’m not an AGW proponent.

It is an evil agenda you seen intent on supporting.

All I did was pass along the facts on corn based ethanol. One of the worst things skeptics can do is start chasing their tails. Try to stay with the facts and everything will take care of itself.

Let me expand on what I wrote. Anyone who chooses 1998 as a starting point to make any kind of conclusion is on thin ice. Why? Two reasons:

1. Almost any temperature trend using such a short period (1998-2009) will be statistically insignificant.

2. A change in starting year ±1 will affect the conclusion; therefore, the data are not robust.

Another point is the inconsistency in the arguments here – I read about doubt in any surface measurements, yet see people making all kinds of statements (“It’s cooling.”) based on these measurements. There is talk about the MIA and MWP and cycles (“…we know about ~400 year periods…”), but what are these conclusions based on? Nobody here likes the proxy records, so what other data are there? I won’t go into regional vs. global measurements.

It appears we are in agreement for the most part. I realize the statistical problems. However, you have to understand these kind of claims have been coming from the alarmist camp for 20 years. Essentially, these kind of articles are simply throwing it back into their face. In addition, the unknowns are likely to be so large that any analysis is fraught with problems.

And why the slam on medical research of the 1960s? We had antibiotics, vaccines for smallpox and polio and were developing vaccines against the other childhood diseases. The structure of DNA was known and the genetic code was being unraveled. The Surgeon General declared that smoking was harmful and the harmful effects of DDT were publicized. Of course we know more now, but the medical researchers were on the right path and were shown to be correct. There were naysayers back then, like the tobacco companies that waged a campaign to sow doubt about the science, but I’m not sure you want me to go down that path. Hmmm…maybe we are at the same stage as medical research back then.

I didn’t slam anything. I pointed out that there were many outrageous claims being made by medical researchers 1960s. In a similar manner, lots of good work is being done in climate science at the moment. The problem is you once again have outrageous claims being made with poor supporting evidence. That’s why I said I thought there were many similarities.

The OISM petition, signed by over 31,000 scientist , circulated just in the USA, with over 9,000 PHD signatories, all disputing CAGW. Scientist such as Lindzen http://www.openletteglobalwarming.info/Site/Richard_Lindzen.html and many others, highly qualified PHD scientist that state far more then minor differences and subtle changes. The Heartland Institute has recently sponsored three international meetings for skeptical scientist. More than 800 scientists heard 80 presentations in March. They endorsed an 881-page document, created by 40 authors with outstanding academic credentials, that challenges the most recent publication by the IPCC. Last year 60 German scientists sent a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel urging her to “strongly reconsider” her position supporting man-made global warming. Sixty scientists in Canada took similar action. Recently, when the American Physical Society published its support for man-made global warming, 200 of its members objected and demanded that the membership be polled to determine the APS’ true position. The Russian Academy of Sciences and the US Association of State Climatologists are just two of the scientific organizations that have trenchantly expressed serious doubts about the imagined “consensus” on climate change.

And so sir, do not rip on lay men who may missrepresent skeptics and inflate conclusions in either direction, instead read the papers, read about the hockey stick, read the Wegman and North reports, read the Real Climate defense and read the “climate audit responses, read the climategate papers, etc, etc.

By your post above you place yourself directly in the same camp as those you condemm, just the other side of the coin.

‘ Steve Goddard (09:07:13) :
Alexej,
As I have explained several times already, the reason to start the second graph with 1998 is because there was a large step function upwards in that year, leading to Hansen’s “warmest decade ever.”
The point is that temperatures have been declining through the past decade, and are back to where they were from 1930-1997.
The first graph shows the entire NCDC record. Is that “cherry picking?” ‘

I quite agree. My point was a “political” one on how to AVOID a discussion about cherry-picking (valid only at the moment).

” Deech56 (10:16:38) :
In my experience, you pick the level of significance at 95% and the sidedness of the test ahead of time, but report the calculated p value if the result achieves significance. So the result would be either “not significant” or “p<0.0XX". "

OK if you think the word "usually" before "pick". But if a new AIDS-medicament has significant healing at 90%, that would be good enough for me to produce it.

Kukla pointed to two things as conditions for a return to a glacial period – a low obliquity and perihelion in NH winter. Right now one of those conditions is met – perihelion at Jan 7 2010 – but the other is not, obliquity while falling is above its midpoint.

Do you see either of these factors as relevant?

They are very relevant to a reentry to an ice age glacial. And we don’t really know at exactly what obliquity we get the tipping point…

But as I’ve said many times, it’s not a glacial that’s the problem. The ice cap was at New York, now it’s at Greenland. Draw a line, divide by 100,000 years. That’s the rate of ice advance. About 800 feet / year. Even a snail can outrun a glacial.

The problem is events like the one 3200 BC when Otzi got buried under a brand new glacier and when the “tropical ice caps” in Peru flash froze some tufts of green that are just now thawing out… So we KNOW that sometimes there is a very rapid onset of cold. (But the ice depth being mass flow limited takes time to catch up…)

Those events can not be caused by planetary / orbital mechanics.

So we’re back at ocean oscillators, solar variation (perhaps of a kind we’ve never seen before), cosmic ray / cloud effects, whatever…

But what is clearly shown in the ice cores and ocean sediments is a 1500 year cycle of Bond Events (and even back before the holocene in prior glacials as Dansgaard Oeschger events – same cycle, just each team found it in a different time period and via different means, so both get a name for the part they found…) SOMETHING causes a 1500 year (mostly periodic but with some error band) sudden onset of cold… and we don’t know what… and it happens both during interglacials and during glacials. (Yeah, middle of a $^$#% ice age and it gets COLDER?! Talk about your ‘bad day’ ;-) and it looks like there is a 5200 year or so cycle too, given the Maya calendar match to the 3200 BC mountain glacier onset event.

So my vote would be on a solar cycle that we’ve not observed (the last one having been about 1500 years ago…) but who knows.

On corn for fuel and feed storage:

Yes, we are setting ourselves up for hideous disaster from any absolutely normal crop failure with our “just in time” system. And yes, the Chinese are buying up all the coal contracts they can get…

But turning field corn into fuel does not do much to reduce food available. We ferment out the starch, but the protein does go to make cows and pigs… The problem is not shortage of food, the problem is that the folks who need it live an ocean away and in poverty. (The feed conversion ratio on cows is about 10:1 while pigs are about 3:1 so if we were short of food, we could skip a 1 lb steak and have 10 lbs of corn and soybeans (dry weight). It takes a LONG time to eat one dry pound of either of those two…

Rhodesia (or whatever they are calling it these days) is a prime example. Regional Bread basket and food exporter turned into starvation by a loony “back to the land” and “economic justice” plan. Large mechanized farms produced excess; then chaos and small family plots failed to produce. People starve. In Sudan it’s the conflict between Muslims who control the food imports and Christians in the south with no ports. You can go down the list… Famine is NOT a production issue. It’s a distribution issue (usually resulting from political conflict or greed).

But algae gives vastly more production of fuels / acre (and consume sewage…) so are a much better choice. Sugarcane in the tropics is also much better ( IIRC 8:1 energy gain as opposed to about 1.3 : 1 for corn alcohol.) In the USA, corn ethanol is just a backward farm subsidy program.

BTW, shipping boat loads of food to an impoverished country usually does as much harm as good. Puts the local farmers out of business. Then what happens NEXT year?… There is no good solution (which is why Economics is called ‘The Dismal Science’… best you can do is ship almost, but not quite, enough grain (so prices stay up) and not very good tasting grains at that…or rubbery ‘food bars’…

So we’re back at ocean oscillators, solar variation (perhaps of a kind we’ve never seen before), cosmic ray / cloud effects, whatever…

But what is clearly shown in the ice cores and ocean sediments is a 1500 year cycle of Bond Events (and even back before the holocene in prior glacials as Dansgaard Oeschger events – same cycle, just each team found it in a different time period and via different means, so both get a name for the part they found…) SOMETHING causes a 1500 year (mostly periodic but with some error band) sudden onset of cold… and we don’t know what… and it happens both during interglacials and during glacials. (Yeah, middle of a $^$#% ice age and it gets COLDER?! Talk about your ‘bad day’ ;-) and it looks like there is a 5200 year or so cycle too, given the Maya calendar match to the 3200 BC mountain glacier onset event.

So my vote would be on a solar cycle that we’ve not observed (the last one having been about 1500 years ago…) but who knows.
********

Good observations. IMO, it’s got to be some kind of ocean-current change. A failure of the N Atlantic Drift could be it (the Gulf Stream circulation wouldn’t stop, but deflect southward).

There’s no precedent for a solar change of the magnitude required to cause these abrupt, massive temp swings. Doesn’t mean it couldn’t be, of course, but I doubt it.

It is funny to watch these AGW adherents follow their glorious leader Gavin’s charge for them to go to skeptic blogs and try to bog them down with misstatements. I have noticed a decided uptick in these goofballs posting since he made this suggestion, both here and at Climate Audit. Coincidence? I think not.

RE: Alexej Buergin (04:26:58) :
” Deech56 (10:16:38) :
In my experience, you pick the level of significance at 95% and the sidedness of the test ahead of time, but report the calculated p value if the result achieves significance. So the result would be either “not significant” or “p<0.0XX". "

OK if you think the word "usually" before "pick". But if a new AIDS-medicament has significant healing at 90%, that would be good enough for me to produce it.
If the results of a trial had a p value of 0.1, it would fail. This might be good enough for you to produce it, but the FDA would not approve it. If a drug were that promising, though, another trial with a higher N might be run.

And Richard M,

I pointed out that there were many outrageous claims being made by medical researchers 1960s. In a similar manner, lots of good work is being done in climate science at the moment. The problem is you once again have outrageous claims being made with poor supporting evidence. That’s why I said I thought there were many similarities.

Which outrageous claims were made in the peer-reviewed medical literature in the 1960s? I agree that there is a lot of good climate science being done now; all I am asking is that you and others accept the results – if you want to be picky (which is not a bad idea) focus on just the scientific literature.

“Hi Anthony – Do you plan to submit your reply to the Journal of Geophysical Research? Thanks in advance.”

Why that particular journal? If I were Anthony I would not give such information out publicly, considering what the scoundrels exposed in the CRUtape emails and their financial backers are capable of doing, such as blackballing journals, causing mass resignations, and even getting a scientist fired for being an AGW skeptic.

No doubt they would put plenty of pressure on any journal that would consider publishing a paper that further undercuts their AGW hypothesis. They’ve already shown that they are ready, willing and able to engage in the most reprehensible, unethical activity regarding skeptical scientists.

“Hi Anthony – Do you plan to submit your reply to the Journal of Geophysical Research? Thanks in advance.”

Why that particular journal?

Because that’s the journal that published Menne et al. If there’s no published reply, or if the paper that is supposed to arise from the surfacestations project is not published by, or even submitted to, a mainstream journal (E&E doesn’t count), it’s an admission that the whole project was a waste of time, and that the results did not come out as anticipated. When a company touts a big Phase III trial, they need to follow up with some kind of a report, even if the trial was a bust.

Responding to the Menne et al paper will be an excellent opportunity to crunch the numbers on CRN1,2.

I came upon this post from over a year ago.

Some folks have commented that becuase I’ve posted my “How not to measure temperature…” series, that I’m only focused on finding the badly sited stations. While they are a dime a dozen and often visually entertaining, actually what we want to find are the BEST stations. Those are the CRN1 and 2 rated stations. Having a large and well distributed sample size of the best stations will help definitively answer the question about how much bias may exist as a result of the contribution of badly sited stations. Since the majorty of sttaions surveyed so far seem to be CRN 3,4,5 with CRN1,2 making up only 12% of the total surveyed stations thus far, it is important to increase the sample size.

Anthony, it would be great to have some kind of update on this. Are there now enough CRN1, 2 stations surveyed to do the analysis and include it in your response to the Menne et al paper? You could go one better and extend the time series further back than they did.

Knowledge of climate zones is key to interpreting data from a series of temperature sensors. Each climate zone reacts differently (IE is more or less sensitive) to atmospheric conditions. Too many sensors in one type of climate zone will screw the results.

A good laugh can be had by overlaying GISS’ fill-in temperatures with the gold standard climate zone map for the US. Instant realization that GISS is nonsense.

Here’s a recent post on the Menne matter that I’ve copied over from the Tips and Notes thread:

Mike Jonas (04:19:04) :

There could be at least two problems with the Menne paper.

They looked at 114 weather stations, and although it is not stated whether all 114 weather stations were poorly sited, it sounds from the wording as if some were poorly sited and some were well sited. ie, the number of poorly sited stations they looked at was either 114 or rather less.

The stats at surfacestations.org show that as at 16 Jul 09 (before the Menne paper) 1003 stations had been surveyed. Of these, 2% were class 1 and 8% class 2 – both acceptable standards. Classes 3, 4 and 5 (progressively worse-sited stations) were 22%, 61% and 8% respectively. That’s over 900 stations.

So the question is : how were the 114 stations selected, and why didn’t Menne et al simply run their numbers on the whole lot?

They do not seem to have physically visited the sites, simply run the numbers. In which case, it would have been easier and much more relevant to have simply run the whole lot through their analysis rather than spend time and effort selecting a subset.

The second problem is that they only looked at 20 years. Some of those weather stations have records going back 100 years and more. Also, the main period of global warming that the IPCC has been concerned about started back in the 1970s – 30 years ago at least – and the IPCC Report makes its case based on the whole 20th century – 100 years – so to choose to look only at 20 years is, to say the least, curious.

Here’s a recent post on the Menne matter that I’ve copied over from the Tips and Notes thread:

Mike Jonas (04:19:04) :

There could be at least two problems with the Menne paper.

They looked at 114 weather stations, and although it is not stated whether all 114 weather stations were poorly sited, it sounds from the wording as if some were poorly sited and some were well sited. ie, the number of poorly sited stations they looked at was either 114 or rather less.

The stats at surfacestations.org show that as at 16 Jul 09 (before the Menne paper) 1003 stations had been surveyed. Of these, 2% were class 1 and 8% class 2 – both acceptable standards. Classes 3, 4 and 5 (progressively worse-sited stations) were 22%, 61% and 8% respectively. That’s over 900 stations.

So the question is : how were the 114 stations selected, and why didn’t Menne et al simply run their numbers on the whole lot?

They used the stations classified here: “V1.05 USHCN Master Station List. (Note this file was downloaded from http://www.surfacestations.org in June 2009, but is indicated as having been updated on 04.18.2008. A more complete set of USHCN station classifications as referenced in Watts [2009] was not
available for general use at the time of this analysis).”

They used over 500 stations: “71 USHCN stations fall into the good exposure category, while 454 fall into the poor category”.

The reference to 114 stations is to the USCRN which consists of 114 stations at 107 locations which were used as a comparison for recent years.

Gavin made a suggestion to come over here? I must have missed that. I just have this annoying habit of trying to correct misinformation.

Welcome Deech56. It is always good to have more people who try to correct misinformation.

To help me evaluate your self-proclaimed credibility can you point me to some instances where you corrected the misinformation that the IPCC and Pachauri have been spreading? Perhaps some instances where you corrected misinformation coming out of CRU? Perhaps some instances where you corrected the misinformation about M&M’s criticisms.

I must commend you also on not using an arrogant and contradictory name like Think or commonsense, although you could perhaps have used something like your real name.

Deech56 (18:38:48) said:
“Gavin made a suggestion to come over here? I must have missed that. I just have this annoying habit of trying to correct misinformation.”

Welcome Deech56. It is always good to have more people who try to correct misinformation.

To help me evaluate your self-proclaimed credibility can you point me to some instances where you corrected the misinformation that the IPCC and Pachauri have been spreading? Perhaps some instances where you corrected misinformation coming out of CRU? Perhaps some instances where you corrected the misinformation about M&M’s criticisms.

I must commend you also on not using an arrogant and contradictory name like Think or commonsense, although you could perhaps have used something like your real name.

Thanks for the welcome, but if you are referring to the IPCC glacier kerfuffle, someone already did that. Little more than an embarrassing typo. I really haven’t see “misinformation coming out of CRU”, to what were you referring?

I have posted in places that I believe those who said that the PCA choice used in MBH98 probably wasn’t the best, but I don’t have the expertise to correct the authors. Of course, the choice of PCA doesn’t make any difference and the newest papers by Mann, et al. make that a moot point.

I’m no expert, but the misinformation here is very easy to identify, and I have appreciated the efforts of people like Phil., Joel Shore, carrot eater, Ferdinand E. who have pointed out the major errors. Just trying to get at the truth.

And I try not to get too arrogant, and I do appreciate that the host’s allowing my posts. At “American Thinker” I only lasted 3 posts before I was banned. Had some good stuff there, too.

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

Chilling error: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrongly asserted that glaciers in the Himalayas would melt by 2035

Dr Lal’s admission will only add to the mounting furor over the melting glaciers assertion, which the IPCC was last week forced to withdraw because it has no scientific foundation.

According to the IPCC’s statement of principles, its role is ‘to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis, scientific, technical and socio-economic information – IPCC reports should be neutral with respect to policy’.

New Documents Show IPCC Ignored Doubts About Himalayan Glacier Scare
Sunday, 24 January 2010 14:36
By David Holland
[Excerpts]
……………
The contentious 2035 date appears in the paragraph from lines 13 to 17 on page 46 of the second order draft of Working Group II. The only changes to the draft text in the finally published text are the removal of a short redundant sentence and the addition the reference to (WWF, 2005).

David Saltz, of the Desert Research Institute, Ben Gurion University made three comments on this short paragraph including one upon the obvious inconsistency of saying first that the likelihood is very high that Himalayan glaciers will “disappear” by 2035 if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate, and then stating “Its total area will shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035”.

The Lead Author’s response to the comment on inconsistency was:
“Missed to clarify this one”.

The Government of Japan commented rather more critically:
“This seems to be a very important statement, possibly should be in the SPM, but is buried in the middle of this chapter. What is the confidence level/certainty? (i.e.“the likelihood of the glaciers disappearing is very high” is at which level of likelihood? (ref. to Box TS-1, “Description of Likelihood”). Also in this paragraph, the use of “will” is ambiguous and should be replaced with appropriate likelihood/confidence level terminology.”

The Lead Authors’ response to Government of Japan was:
“Appropriate revisions and editing made”.
From what I can see the Lead Authors found none appropriate.
The paragraph, following the 2035 claim and table 10.10, begins:
“The receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers can be attributed primarily to the global warming due to increase in anthropogenic emission of greenhouse gases.”

Hayley Fowler from Newcastle University commented with citations:
“I am not sure that this is true for the very large Karakoram glaciers in the western Himalaya. Hewitt (2005) suggests from measurements that these are expanding – and this would certainly be explained by climatic change in preciptiation and temperature trends seen in the Karakoram region (Fowler and Archer, J Climate in press; Archer and Fowler, 2004) You need to quote Barnett et al.’s 2005 Nature paper here – this seems very similar to what they said.”

The Lead Authors responded:
“Was unable to get hold of the suggested references will consider in the final version”

The Government of Japan again noted the lack of any reference and commented rather critically:
“This statement lacks any reference. Also, the reader wonders, are “global warming” and “climate change” interchangeable? Are we still using “global warming”? Clarification of this would be appreciated.”
“The use of “will” (again) is ambiguous. The confidence level using IPCC terminology should be stated.”

The Lead Author’s response to Government of Japan was once again:
“Appropriate revisions and editing made”.
But once again none were made either in response to Hayley Fowler or the Government of Japan.

For the IPCC TSU, Clare Hanson commented that there was only one reference for the whole section. This was Hasnain, 2002. To Clare Hanson the Lead Authors’ response was:
“More references added”.
So far as I can tell only Shen et al., 2002 and WWF, 2005 were added.

Roger Knights, we’ve already established that the IPCC made an error, but that doesn’t distract from the basic fact that this post was misleading. Why he trendline in the post 1998 but not the post 1895 chart? Why the focus on US temperatures right after NASA released the global temperatures. It was the scientists who discovered the IPCC error, but I don’t see the regular posters here picking up on the points that, while technically true, were misleading. Just look at the couple of posts that refer to the year “1934”. And I would take the Rose’s story with a huge grain of salt. It’s not as if he has a particularly good track record.

Roger Knights, we’ve already established that the IPCC made an error, but that doesn’t distract from the basic fact that this post was misleading. Why he trendline in the post 1998 but not the post 1895 chart? Why the focus on US temperatures right after NASA released the global temperatures. … I don’t see the regular posters here picking up on the points that, while technically true, were misleading. Just look at the couple of posts that refer to the year “1934″.

You and I are debating a tangent from the thrust of this thread (not “post”), so your bringing it in amounts to a diversion. I challenged what you wrote:

Deech56 (15:27:52) :
… if you are referring to the IPCC glacier kerfuffle, someone already did that. Little more than an embarrassing typo.

I provided evidence that the IPCC must have been aware, from reviewer’s comments asking about the source of the 2035 claim, that the it was supported only by non-peer-reviewed material. Lal’s comment to David Rose indicated that they deliberately included it anyway. Therefore your response …

Roger Knights, we’ve already established that the IPCC made an error,

… amounts to an evasion. What kind of error? A typo? Or mendacity?

And I would take the Rose’s story with a huge grain of salt. It’s not as if he has a particularly good track record.

That remains to be seen. The thread by Romm you linked to quotes Lal’s denial. But that doesn’t refute Rose’s claim. Your assuming that it does reveals your bias. The rational course is to wait for Rose’s rebuttal. He may have Lal on tape. (I suspect his editors wouldn’t have let him print such a story unless he had Lal “on the record” in this way.)

Interesting how the global warming community has decided to disown the US because its’ climate is not behaving properly. Same for Antarctica, Europe, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and now Siberia is acting up too.

Why won’t these areas warm up like the IPCC said they would? They are misbehaving badly.

Please point out all the “false, erroneous, and misleading statements.” All of the information is taken directly from NSIDC, NCAR and various newspapers.

Steve, I was referring to the Menne et al paper. Alarmists want to wrongfully use that paper to discredit Watts’ efforts with surfacestations.org and related criticisms of the USHCN and GHCN datasets underlying so much of the works supporting the IPCC reports.

Interesting how the global warming community has decided to disown the US because its’ climate is not behaving properly. Same for Antarctica, Europe, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and now Siberia is acting up too.

Why won’t these areas warm up like the IPCC said they would? They are misbehaving badly.

Disown the US? The US temperatures are still counted along with the rest of the world. You might ask why our host wants to shift the focus from the whole world to one region and from the whole record to one period. You might want to ask why there were trendlines in the short-term chart and not the other. I thought you folks were skeptics.

Steve, I was referring to the Menne et al paper. Alarmists want to wrongfully use that paper to discredit Watts’ efforts with surfacestations.org and related criticisms of the USHCN and GHCN datasets underlying so much of the works supporting the IPCC reports.

Wrongfully? What’s the purpose of the surfacestations project? What are the conclusions that are supposed to be discredited. The question should be whether differences in station quality or how readings are taken affect the surface temperature. Hate to tell you, but Manne, et al. answers this question.

“And I would take the Rose’s story with a huge grain of salt. It’s not as if he has a particularly good track record.”

That remains to be seen. The thread by Romm you linked to quotes Lal’s denial. But that doesn’t refute Rose’s claim. Your assuming that it does reveals your bias. The rational course is to wait for Rose’s rebuttal. He may have Lal on tape. (I suspect his editors wouldn’t have let him print such a story unless he had Lal “on the record” in this way.)

Don’t have time for a full answer, but Rose did misquote Dr. Latif as well. His bias is palpable.

The only person being dishonest here is you. The United States has seen a serious cooling trend over the last decade and you refuse to see it. Europe is having it’s coldest winter in decades, but you are so attached to your ideology that you close your eyes and plug your ears.

No wonder only 28% of Americans care about global warming any more. People are struggling to keep warm through a bitter cold winter after a very cool summer, and they keep getting bombarded with stories about NASA claiming the “second warmest year ever.”

My investigations have led me to conclude that global warming is impossible. Common sense is that as the sun heats the water of the oceans and the temperatures rise, there must be some sort of a mechanism that switches the water-cooling system of earth on, if it gets too hot. Follow my thinking on these easy steps:

1) the higher the temp. of the oceans, the more water vapor rises to the atmosphere,
2) the more water vapor rises from the oceans, the more difference in air pressure, the more wind starts blowing
3) the more wind & warmth, the more evaporation of water (evaporation increasing by many times due to the wind factor),
4) the more evaporation of water the more humidity in the air (atmosphere)
5) the higher the humidity in the air, the more clouds can be formed
6) Svensmark’s theory: the more galactic cosmic rays (GCR), the more clouds are formed (if the humidity is available)
7) the more clouds appear, the more rain and snow and cooler weather,
8) the more clouds and overcast conditions, the more radiation from the sun is deflected from the earth,
9) The more radiation is deflected from earth, the cooler it gets.
10) This cooling puts a brake on the amount water vapor being produced. So now it is back to 1) and wait for heat to start same cycle again…

Now when I first considered this, I stood in amazement again. I remember thinking of the words in Isaiah 40:12-26.

I have been in many factories that have big (water) cooling plants, but I realised that earth itsself is a water cooling plant on a scale that you just cannot imagine. I also thought that my idea of seeing earth as a giant (water) cooling plant with a built-in thermostat must be pretty original….

But it was only soon after that I stumbled on a paper from someone who had already been there, done that …. well, God bless him for that!

i.e. if you want to prove something, you always do need at least two witnesses!

But note my step 6. The Svensmark theory holds that galactic cosmic rays (GCR) initiate cloud formation. I have not seen this, but apparently this has been proven in laboratory conditions. So the only real variability in global temperature could be caused by the amount of GCR reaching earth. In turn, this depends on the activity of the sun, i.e. the extent of the solar magnetic field exerted by the sun on the planetary system. We are now coming out of a period where this field was bigger and more GCR was bent away from earth. This is what “global warming”, mostly.

But apparently now the solar geomagnetic field is heading for an all time low.

Note that in the first graph, if you look at the smoothed monthly values, there was a tipping point in 2003 (light blue line). I cannot ignore the significance of this. I noted similar tipping points elsewhere round about that same time, eg. in earth’s albedo. From 2003 the solar magnetic field has been going down. To me it seems for sure that we are now heading for a period of more cloudiness and hence a period of global cooling. If you look at the 3rd graph, it is likely that there wil be no sun spots visible by 2015. This is confirmed by the paper on global cooling by Easterbrook:

In the 2nd graph of his presentation, Easterbrook projects global cooling into the future. These are the three lines that follow from the last warm period. If the cooling follows the top line we don’t have much to worry about and the weather will be similar to what we had in the previous (warm) period. However, indications are already that we have started following the trend of the 2nd line, i.e. cooling based on the 1880-1915 cooling. In that case it will be the coldest from 2015 to 2020 and the climate will be comparable to what it was in the fifties and sixties. I survived that time, so I guess we all will be fine, if this is the right trendline.

Note that with the third line, the projection stops somewhere after 2020. So if things go that way, we don’t know where it will end. Unfortunately, earth does not have a heater with a thermostat that switches on the heater if it gets too cold. Too much ice and snow causes more sunlight to be reflected from earth. Hence, the trap is set. This is known as the ice age trap. This is why the natural state of earth is that of being covered with snow and ice.
Look here:

However, man is resourceful and may find ways around this problem if we do start falling into a little ice age again. As long as we are not ignorant and listen to the so-called climate scientists who really have other agenda’s. A green agenda is still useless if it has the wrong items on the agenda… Obviously: As Easterbrook notes, global cooling is much more disastrous for humans than global warming. Apparently, climategate has now also spread to the USA. See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/22/american-thinker-on-cru-giss-and-climategate/

Note that in Easterbrook’s projection graph, the line showing the increase and decrease in global temperatures of the northern latitude is dashed. It looks like the northern hemisphere is always getting the brunt of the extreme weather.

So if you get tired of all that ice and snow, you may know that you are always most welcome to come and stay with us here, in the southern hemisphere!

The only person being dishonest here is you. The United States has seen a serious cooling trend over the last decade and you refuse to see it. Europe is having it’s coldest winter in decades, but you are so attached to your ideology that you close your eyes and plug your ears.

Please show the statistics to support your claim that we are in a “serious cooling trend over the last decade.”

That is exactly what this article is about. Winters and summers are much cooler in the US now than they were ten years ago. We have seen near record snow for the past few years. Last summer was the coolest in a century for much of the country. Similar story for Europe, and Mexico, and Alaska and parts of South America and Siberia.

That is exactly what this article is about. Winters and summers are much cooler in the US now than they were ten years ago. We have seen near record snow for the past few years. Last summer was the coolest in a century for much of the country. Similar story for Europe, and Mexico, and Alaska and parts of South America and Siberia.

““Best winter ever,” declared Jeff Tippett, a longtime local skier who has hit Aspen Mountain nearly every day this season. If this keeps up, winter 2007-08 could erase 1983-84 as the standard by which all powder performances are measured, he said.”

“(Jan. 8) — Europe struggled with Arctic-like weather today, with forecasts predicting worse to come. In Britain, which has been hit by its harshest winter in decades, the coldest day of the season so far was recorded, with temperatures plunging to minus 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit in a Scottish village”

“In neighbouring Bulgaria, rescue services battled through snow drifts to supply villages cut off by blizzards which also forced the closure of major highways. Schools and other public buildings were closed as about 20 towns recorded their coldest daytime temperatures on record.”

News stories are not anecdotes. They are reporting on the real world. The Rutgers University Snow Lab statistics I quoted above are not anecdotes. The NCDC data for the last twelve years in the article are not anecdotes.

You are in deep, deep denial about what is going on in the real world.

Indeed it does warrant further investigation. In fact, it is so interesting a topic that I cannot understand why, when the change in instrumentation and/or siting was made, the new and old stations were not run simultaneously for a time to actually quantify the effect.

Duh!

You are the first person I’ve seen who has said this. It is so obvious, why is it that scientists – supposedly the wisest of us and with the best foresight – all the scientists studying climate and meteorology, never thought of this?

It is the most obvious thing in climatology, that if you move a thermometer, knowing it will give different readings, that you need to quantify what those differences are. Not doing so leaves it up to later researchers to derive an adjustment factor, which may or may not be correct. Getting a year’s worth of overlapping data solves the problem, gives everyone an adjustment value that cannot be questioned and cannot be fudged.

Geez! I don’t know about those maps they use, which throw doubt on their entire database. Why do I say this?

Look just south of Poland, SE of Germany. There is a country there outlined like a peanut in its shell. That country is none other than Czechoslovakia. Now what is it about Czechoslovakia that suggests map is bogus?

Czechoslovakia no longer exists.

It stopped being on any real maps on January 1, 1993, when Slovakia was allowed to split off, making two countries – Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Neither of those is shown on the map, though they’ve been nations now for over 17 years.

Hey, I am just saying, if these scientists are posting a weather forecasting map in the year 2010, the least they could do is get their freaking basic geography right.

I am not even going to mention the former Soviet states.

It is obvious they are using a map that is at least 20 years old. Holy crap, Batman!

But. . . Germany is united. WTF?…lol

Geographically challenged meteorologists. It makes you wonder if they have the weather patterns overlain on the right continent.

Interesting post from a historical point of view, but geographic boundaries don’t have any effect on the weather. Those maps are from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction, which generally do an excellent job on their two week forecasts.

I mostly posted that tongue-in-cheek. But it seemed odd that scientists would use outmoded maps.

And I THINK I knew that national boundaries don’t stop weather from invading or escaping. That is especially pertinent in this thread, with some of the commenters pointing out that US weather is not global weather. US boundaries do not have any effect on the weather, either. (Which I now know you know…)

“And I would take the Rose’s story with a huge grain of salt. It’s not as if he has a particularly good track record.”

That remains to be seen. The thread by Romm you linked to quotes Lal’s denial. But that doesn’t refute Rose’s claim. Your assuming that it does reveals your bias. The rational course is to wait for Rose’s rebuttal. He may have Lal on tape. (I suspect his editors wouldn’t have let him print such a story unless he had Lal “on the record” in this way.)

Don’t have time for a full answer, but Rose did misquote Dr. Latif as well.

The truth of Dr. Latif’s claim, like Lal’s, remains to be seen. Bigshots often claim they’ve been misquoted, or quoted out of context, when they’ve “dropped a brick.” Andy Revkin at Dot Earth has just posted a comment that he has contacted the Daily Mail to try to get to the bottom of this controversy. I hope we’ll hear something from him soon.

His bias is palpable.

Not necessarily. He may just be a sloppy sensationalist, which isn’t unheard of in the field of journalism. (BTW, congratulations for not saying, as I’ve seen it put on other sites, that his bias is “palatable.”)

Incidentally, here’s the latest on Kaser’s warning to the IPCC. It looks as though the IPCC’s staff (i.e., its “technical support unit”) DID (as I claimed in another thread) receive his e-mail and ignore it.

January 25, 2010, 6:02 pm
Explanation Offered for Error in U.N. Climate Report
By JAMES KANTER

BRUSSELS — Faulty communication allowed an unsubstantiated estimate of the melting rate of Himalayan glaciers to make it into the landmark 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a senior scientist and panel official said Monday.
…………..
The official, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, a vice chairman of the climate change panel, said that a glaciologist, Georg Kaser at the University of Innsbruck, in Austria, had sought to correct the information about the glaciers before it was published by the panel but that the correction came too late and never reached the people who could fix the statement.

“It’s very unfortunate,” Dr. van Ypersele said, because Dr. Kaser “actually provided the correct information, but not to the correct person.”

The lead authors “didn’t, from my understanding, get the caveats that would have been useful,” Dr. van Ypersele said.

He added that he had examined records of e-mail messages and found that the authors had never received the pertinent message from Dr. Kaser. Furthermore, Dr. Kaser’s “most pointed criticism” of the findings on glacial melting came after the contents of the report had been completed, Dr. van Ypersele said.

Dr. Kaser, who has been a report author and has also studied the retreating snows around Mount Kilimanjaro, said Monday in a telephone interview that he had sent the information to a “technical support unit” at the climate change panel rather to the lead authors directly. Dr. Kaser said he chose not to go “straightforward, to the lead authors” because “it is always a delicate matter” when criticizing other colleagues’ findings.

My comment:
Dr. van Ypersele makes it sound as though the fault was Dr. Kaser’s for not approaching the lead authors directly, and implies that the “technical support unit” therefore bore no blame for not passing along his message.

But WERE they blameless? Weren’t they supposed to perform a “mailroom” function as part of their job? You’d think so, on the face of it. If so, shouldn’t they have sent Kaser a pro forma response that his feedback had been noted and would be passed along to the appropriate persons? And, if they made that pledge, then why didn’t they fulfill it?

Or, if they thought that forwarding e-mails to the appropriate destination wasn’t part of their job description, why didn’t they tell Kaser the names and e-mail addresses of the persons whom he should have contacted?

Finally, if they didn’t give Kaser any response at all, why not? Did they know or suspect that their superiors didn’t want to hear reasons to tone down AR4’s alarmism?

Incidentally, here’s one reader response on Dot Earth to this item:

Maurizio Morabito, January 25th, 2010

This explains very little and simply opens up a series of new questions…why didn’t Dr Kaser think it worthwhile to voice his concerns in any form (public, or private) after the publication of the IPCC report in 2007? What made Dr Kaser place more importance on his colleagues potentially ill feelings about being criticized, than on scientific truth?

And if a relatively well-known published scientist such as Dr Kaser finds himself forced into some kind of self-censorship and reluctance to speak out, how poisonous, impermeable to criticism and ultimately anti-scientific has the world of the IPCC become?